Improving public health through housing: Critical reflections on current housing delivery approaches in England

McClatchey, Rachael

Abstract

Housing may be the most powerful and underused tool at our disposal to improve population health. Despite substantial evidence showing which features of housing are beneficial or detrimental to health, too often people are living in homes which have a negative health impact. Therefore, there is a pressing need to understand how to move from theoretical principles to delivering healthy housing in practice, especially in England where the medical costs associated with inadequate housing are highest compared to all European Union member states.
Through the submission of seven academic works, alongside a critical commentary which triangulates data, theory and methodologies, this thesis seeks to meet requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy by Publication award. It establishes health impacts of current approaches to market housing delivery in England and possible changes to produce healthier housing. Framed with social science levels of analysis, it is complexity informed to a greater degree than is often explored within the field.

Novel contributions include: considerations when selecting a framework to demonstrate how housing impacts on health, the most comprehensive healthy housing framework known to date, the identification of new challenges and opportunities to healthy housing delivery and a matrix representation of the power relations between relevant stakeholders. Overall, it highlights concern that some mainstream current approaches to housing delivery (crowding, reducing regulatory requirements and increasing use of privately rented housing) without the necessary checks and safeguards, seem to be delivering variable and often poor-quality, insecure housing with detrimental health implications. Whereas one of the emerging approaches (Community-Led Housing) may support good health.
Given that England has some of the oldest housing stock in Europe, and the dominant stakeholders with power over housing are from non-health and often private sectors, five key recommendations are put forward to improve public health through future research and practice.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jan 22, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 13, 2024
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11622911
• Award Date: Jun 13, 2024