SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This report presents a conceptual and methodological approach for understanding the mental health impacts of the UK’s housing crisis. The UK is currently in the midst of a housing crisis, felt across private and social tenancies. This crisis, which has been long in the making, is linked not only to rising rates of homelessness, but also to increased rates of occupation of sub standard dwellings, and the increased use of temporary forms of accommodation by local authorities. A crisis of housing is also a crisis of health. Existing studies indicate strong connections between residence in poor quality and insecure housing and declining mental health. Given the scale of the housing crisis, and given evidence of its deeply uneven health outcomes, this report suggests we may not have the theoretical tools to understand links between housing and mental health. We present a conceptual and methodological approach to understand ‘Housing Distress’. Developed from ethnographic and participatory research with a collective of Somali women from Birmingham , we suggest that co-produced approaches which centre bodily and mental distress might provide a means of understanding historical and contemporary connections between regimes of un-homing and mental ill-health. This is a joint report authored by the Housing, Migration and Health Lab (HoMH Lab). It features researchers from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS and the School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London. Support for this research which forms this report was provided by SOAS, and Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, LSE.