Listen to the episode:

You can find the transcript through this link.

---

Are you interested in social housing quality and its effects on the tenants’ life? 

Our summary today works with the article titled Housing as a social determinant of health and wellbeing: developing an empirically-informed realist theoretical framework from 2020 by Steve Rolfe, Lisa Garnham, Jon Godwin, Isobel Anderson, Pete Seaman, and Cam Donaldson, published in the BMC Public Health, which is part of Springer Nature. 

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how urban social housing quality influences human wellbeing and health, which will be discussed in detail with the next interviewee, Chris Maher in episode 96. This article presents a theoretical framework to understand the less tangible aspects of housing experience on health and wellbeing.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Social housing and renting can impact tenants’ health and wellbeing so how we do it must be properly set up to create the best outcomes.
2. Quality renting service and quality housing influence the tenants’ experiences in a positive way, improving health and wellbeing.
3. Investigating and improving these aspects can even operate as public health intervention and prevention in the lives of tenants.

You can find the article through this link.

Abstract: The role of housing as a social determinant of health is well-established, but the causal pathways are poorly understood beyond the direct effects of physical housing defects. For low-income, vulnerable households there are particular challenges in creating a sense of home in a new tenancy which may have substantial effects on health and wellbeing. This study examines the role of these less tangible aspects of the housing experience for tenants in the social and private rented sectors in west central Scotland. The paper analyses quantitative data from a mixed methods, longitudinal study of tenants from three housing organisations, collected across the first year of their tenancy. The paper postulates causal hypotheses on the basis of staff interviews and then uses a Realist Research approach to test and refine these into a theoretical framework for the connections between tenants’ broader experience of housing and their health and wellbeing. Housing service provision, tenants’ experience of property quality and aspects of neighbourhood are all demonstrated to be significantly correlated with measures of of health and wellbeing. Analysis of contextual factors provides additional detail within the theoretical framework, offering a basis for further empirical work. The findings provide an empirically-informed realist theoretical framework for causal pathways connecting less tangible aspects of the housing experience to health and wellbeing. Applying this within housing policy and practice would facilitate a focus on housing as a public health intervention, with potential for significant impacts on the lives of low-income and vulnerable tenants. The framework also offers a basis for further research to refine our understanding of housing as a social determinant of health.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.018I – Interview with María José Yanez about the Nightingale approach to reinvent the real estate industry;
• No.033I – Interview with Anthony Mazzei about reinventing the renting experience;
• No.096I – Interview with Chris Maher talking about social housing;

---