Interplays between housing and long-term care policies: a comparison between Austria and the Czech Republic

Abstract

Owing to the complex links between housing and care, placing housing policy in the context of long-term care (LTC) policies is difficult; this leads to a limited number of studies on this topic. However, the practical relevance of links between these two policy fields is self-evident. To partially challenge a separation between housing and LTC policies in research, we apply the concept of ‘housing as an infrastructure of care’, as defined by Power and Mee (Housing Studies, 35(3), 2020). The article conceptualises and contextualises how housing policies interplay with LTC policy instruments by contributing to a similar outcome. After discussing the theoretical implications, the article provides an empirical illustration of this argument through a comparative housing analysis of two carefully selected cases: Austria and the Czech Republic. LTC policies in these two countries are based on remarkably similar cash instruments, notably implemented in contrasting housing policy contexts. As these cash benefits lead to similar outcomes in encouraging informal care provided chiefly by families, the analysis seeks to understand how different housing policies matter for these outcomes. The analysis discusses how particular housing policy instruments may create uneven care capacities.

KEYWORDS: :

• Infrastructure
• governance
• long-term care
• housing
• comparative analysis

Acknowledgments

I thank Ewa Barczak and Justyna Wilak for their support throughout the research process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Because the EQLS data contained no information on housing costs, we employed another dataset, EU-SILC, to explore this topic.

Additional information

Funding

The National Science Centre Poland supported this work under Grant 2018/31/D/HS5/01913.