Housing inequalities and resilience: the lived experience of COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 policy responses have intensified the use of housing as a spatial and material defence against community spread of infection. In so doing, they have focussed attention upon pre-existing inequalities and the effects of socio-economic management of COVID-19. This paper draws upon individual households’ accounts to explore these effects on housing inequalities, and then adapts a critical resilience framework from disaster response in order to examine the implications for policymaking. The empirical work centres upon a case study of lived experiences of COVID-19-constrained conditions, based on a longitudinal-style study combining semi-structured interviews with 40 households, photographs and household tours at two datapoints (before/during COVID-19) in Victoria, Australia. The study reveals how these households were impacted across four domains: (1) employment, finances, services, and mobilities; (2) homemaking including comfort and energy bills, food and provisioning, and home-schooling/working from home; (3) relationships, care and privacy, and; (4) social, physical and mental health. The interviews also indicate how households coped and experienced relief payments and other related support policies during COVID-19. Drawing upon literature on disaster response, we highlight the centrality of vulnerability and resilience in recognising household exposure and sensitivity to COVID-19, and capabilities in coping. From this analysis, gaps in COVID-19 housing and welfare policy are exposed and guide a discussion for future housing policy interventions and pandemic planning.

KEYWORDS :

• Housing inequalities
• households
• homemaking
• resilience
• COVID-19 management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received competitive funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) under award 53256. In turn, the project also benefitted from data collected for two other competitive grants awarded by the Australian Research Council. These are: LP150100089 (Infill Developments: Housing Outcomes Metrics and Evaluation) and LP170100420 (Housing Energy Efficiency Transitions).