Housing through the life course: questions, challenges and opportunities

Housing remains one of the fundamental pillars of both life and lifestyle for us as individuals. Housing is also important within our economies and societies as it is a source of employment within the building industry, an object of public policy attention and action, and a focus of concern for debates around fairness or inclusion within society. This book considers the role housing plays in the lives of individuals and households through their life course, and along the way it confronts issues about the part housing plays within society, economy and culture. Most writing on housing takes a cross-sectional view that considers the housing market or the system of social provision at a single point in time. This may be during a census or other period of data collection, or as a generalised set of conditions lacking a temporal reference. But this is not our lived experience of housing: at a personal level we know housing through our engagement with the housing system; as a child being raised by parents or carers; as a young person searching for our first accommodation; as an adult entering a relationship and seeking a home to share; and as a household decision maker seeking a dwelling that is convenient to employment, recreation and, potentially, schooling for children.

There is a substantial body of work on housing through the life course that spans more than four decades. Research in this vein has discussed housing histories (Farmer and Barrell 1981), housing careers (Kendig, 1990a), housing pathways (Clapham, 2002; 2004; 2005a), housing biographies (Clark et al, 2003) and more recently, housing transitions (Beer and Faulkner, 2009), but in all instances the objective focus of analysis and discussion has been on the series of housing circumstances occupied by an individual or household over their life course. Much of this work has focused on critical points of transition – such as moves into homeownership or the impact of the death of a partner – as well as the differing trajectories of groups from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. There is, for example, a considerable North American literature on pathways into homeownership for minority groups such as African and Hispanic Americans.