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The shared housing model has been used widely for many years in association with supported housing. It is the subject of debate among providers and commissioners, who may regard it as old‐fashioned and not conducive to independent living, but for some clients and organisations it continues to offer a positive option in helping alleviate loneliness and isolation. Current growth in the work of social landlords and their agents includes a wider range of client groups with a variety of aspirations and support needs. Shared housing may offer new opportunities to these groups. With the new emphasis on neighbourhoods and inclusion, does the shared housing model possess attributes that commend it to communities in new ways, or is it a model of the past? The article offers suggestions to enable shared housing to be evaluated as part of housing associations' business plans while keeping a focus on residents' views, as reflected in 25 case study locations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of affordable home ownership in the light of the recent global financial crisis.

The paper draws on recent research conducted by the authors and others which included analysis of secondary data and policy documents and interviews with key stakeholders including housing associations and developers. The theoretical scope of the paper is outlined in the first section which looks at the principles behind the two main approaches to providing affordable home ownership: shared equity and shared ownership. Given continuing aspirations on the part of most households in England to become home owners, the key comparison is with the attributes of full ownership.

The paper finds that the main products share many of the attributes of full home ownership while remaining more affordable. The economic situation post‐2007 made both shared ownership and shared equity more difficult. The crisis and its aftermath also suggest that there is a need to develop a more robust and longer term market in equity sharing. This could be of real significance into the longer term, especially if the availability of mortgage finance remains constrained for many years to come. The paper concludes that in the longer term, developing a range of partial tenures which provide most of the benefits of owner‐occupation but which reduce risks to individual households and improve affordability in the early years is a desirable strategy.

There are clear implications for policy makers in other countries, notably the benefits from developing an intermediate tenure market which includes institutional equity and risk taking rather than continued large‐scale reliance on debt finance.

Given stated governmental ambitions to meet housing aspirations, this paper clarifies how it is possible to meet an identified need for affordable home ownership products to fill the growing “gap” between first‐time buyers who can purchase with parental help and those who have no means of achieving home ownership, even though they have the income to support such a choice.

JOHN GROOMS HOUSING ASSOCIATION provides housing for people with disabilities. The association commissioned the Housing and Support Partnership to carry out a national survey of wheelchair users to get an up‐to‐date picture of their housing position and to explore the possibilities of making more use of shared ownership. This paper reports their findings.

This paper aims to assess financial interoperability implications associated with first-time buyers (FTB) in housing development and the role of the community land trust shared equity housing model (CLT SEHM).

The interoperability optimisation process adopted by this study involved triangulated findings from the literature, semi-structured interviews and questionnaire surveys. The text analysis of interview responses was actualised with Nvivo 9.0. This process informed the validation of themes through a questionnaire survey (purposive sampling), of which findings were subsequently analysed with statistical methods including binary logistic regression to validate interoperability rational and implications.

The study identified positive financial interoperability outcomes for a successful synergy between the CLT SEHM and FTBs. From the analysis, there were sustainable results for average income multiple and property transfer/resale value for the CLT SEHM compared to conventional models. However, for the most at risk FTB groups, recommendations included increased concessions for CLT SEHM developments to incentivise bespoke rent purchase hybrid schemes.

This research provided a good starting point for achieving an improved level of efficiency necessary for the introduction of emerging/renewed alternative housing models into mainstream operational capabilities in housing and local development policies.

This paper aims to provide insights into Arabic-Australian community attitudes regarding social innovation of a new shared model of accommodation for the 65+ age group to facilitate independent behavior within a shared living environment.

A survey of 520 people of whom 65 per cent were Arabic speakers either by mother or second language. Survey responses were filtered to Arabic speakers and further analyzed to identify groups characterized by the latent attitudes underlying responses.

The results confirmed the presence of two small groups representing in aggregate 13 per cent of sample variance who have positive attitudes toward 65+ age group shared accommodation for either themselves or their parents. These respondents focused on companionship and cultural factors rather than potential financial or medical benefits from the new model.

The application of an empirical Bayes methodology to the limited data in this research implicitly restricts the interpretation of the results to the Australian-Arabic community that was investigated.

The results of this research provide a sound basis for private sector interest in exploring differentiated architectures and business models that will facilitate choices of shared accommodation by the Australian-Arabic 65+ year age group.

This finding aligns with increasing health and mobility more widely among the rapidly growing 65+ year old segment of the Australian population and with recent Australian Government restructuring of age care to introduce greater personal accountability for self-care.

This research is original and important in setting future directions for expanding the richness of choice in Australian-Arabic community retirement living.

The COVID-19 global health crisis is undeniably a global housing crisis. Our study focuses on quality of life in urban mid- and high-rise apartment housing, the fastest growing housing types in many cities around the world. This housing typology presents unique challenges relating to connection to nature, daylight and fresh air.

This multi-disciplinary literature review analyzes more than 100 published papers from peer-reviewed sources from environmental psychology, building science and architecture relevant to quality of life in high-rise housing, as well as more than 40 recent newspaper and magazine articles about the possible impacts of COVID-19 on housing. We identify synergies between passive design strategies and health-promoting architecture or “restorative environmental design” principles.

Post-pandemic, health-promoting apartment housing design must prioritize (1) window placement and views that support stress recovery and restoration; (2) lighting levels based on spaces that can satisfy multiple uses and users; (3) bedrooms designed for restful sleep that contribute to circadian regulation; (4) living rooms with better indoor air quality, with a focus on natural ventilation; (5) access to nature, through the purposeful design of balconies and (6) unit sizes and layouts that enable physical distancing and prevent crowding.

We identify new social and environmental design priorities in the form of evidence-based design principles to inform and promote healthy and restorative living environments for residents in apartment housing.

Knowing and understanding the spatial needs of users is imperative for the design of livable and sustainable houses. However, the practical and theoretical difficulties associated with this, especially in social housing, create a shortfall in design knowledge known as user needs gap. To bridge this gap, design researchers over the years, have sought to provide feedback for design decision-making through post-occupancy evaluation studies using preferences and residential satisfaction as constructs. In view of their limitations, this study aims to explore residential adaptations as residents’ tacit means of communicating their spatial needs, and a pathway to understanding residents’ housing requirements.

The study was exploratory in nature and a case study by design using a convergent parallel design within the mixed methods tradition. Activity Theory as used as a conceptual framework. The study involved three strands of research as follows: estimation of the floor areas of the rooms and spaces of the case study designs using the International Standards Organisation intramuros method; a survey of households and their activities using questionnaires; and observation of residents’ adaptations captured photographs and drawings. In all, 43 households out of the 66 apartments in the two case designs were surveyed.

The study found that while the units were theoretically large, they were practically inadequate when average household sizes were taken into account in a space per person analysis. In response, particularly to sleeping requirements of children, residents make different forms of adaptations – normative, such as house sharing, compositional and organizational, as well as add-ins and add-ons including and illegal alterations.

The paper presents residential adaptations as an empirically grounded, contextually embedded and practically useful means of exploring and understanding users’ spatial needs in housing design. Residential adaptations provide a means through which residents communicate their housing needs, albeit tacitly – a means for self-expression, self-extension and self-determination. To theory, the study shows that residential adaptations can be useful as a construct for understanding residents’ spatial needs, though fuzzy. It also helps understand how the tensions in an activity system, may result from contradictions produced by the lurking effect of contextual factors. This makes contextual knowledge, particularly cultural knowledge, critical to the design.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the evolution in the provision of public services’ delivery, with a specific focus on housing policies. New practices are being implemented, thanks to the cooperation of the public sector, private, and nonprofit actors. Rather than just providing assistance to households with income levels falling below specific thresholds, social housing addresses the broader and more complex areas of vulnerability that affect several categories, such as single parents, young students and professionals, and temporarily unemployed people. Co-production also comes into the picture, since many social housing projects require that beneficiaries contribute to the implementation of the project itself, for example by managing the buildings and common areas or by creating communities.

The chapter will start from considerations on the emergence of new housing needs. It will then review the literature on the concept of co-production of public services and provide a definition of social housing. Then, examples of social housing will be analyzed based on specific criteria derived from the literature and the theoretical framework. The methodology is qualitative and based on descriptive case analysis.

The chapter analyzes the evolution of public housing policies by taking into account the social and economic changes that have determined greater and more complex areas for public intervention, adopting a twofold approach of partnership and collaboration between the three sectors, and of co-production of public services by directly engaging the users.

This chapter examines how democratic innovations can strengthen participation in the social housing sector. In Denmark, social housing offers affordable housing to a large number of Danes. The sector is grounded in traditions for resident involvement and engagement, and the democratic model in the sector is unique to Denmark. The residents have the majority say in all decision-making boards, which enables them to influence both the physical surroundings and social initiatives. Despite the positive merits, the sector faces challenges concerning increased segregation, municipalities allocating an increased share of socially and economically marginalised people to the sector, and less participation in the residential democracy. This chapter studies two cases of initiatives that experiment with democratic innovations to enhance participation in local housing associations. The two cases are innovative initiatives in the social housing sector and illustrate the potential benefits of increased participation. The chapter concludes that project-based initiatives might be on the rise and seem to hold considerable potential for enhancing participation. The challenge, then, is still to secure the coordination and strategic direction of the initiatives while combining them with the formal resident democracy.

The aim of the article is to encourage debate, monitoring and further research into the effects of welfare reform, and related policies, in particular on offenders, housing and recidivism and the savings made through reforms versus the potential cost of increased recidivism.

The article is a review of legislative, consultation and available statistical documentation and available research on housing benefit shared accommodation rate.

The implementation of welfare reforms is ongoing; suitable stable accommodation has been identified as a key element in effective resettlement.

There is little research on the combined impact of government budgetary constraints in relation to housing and recidivism and there is a need for further research, monitoring and discussion to monitor the future situation.

Monitoring by agencies and further research is required.

There is potential for increased recidivism due to the availability of secure suitable accommodation.

There has been little discussion of the impact of welfare reforms on access to suitable secure housing and recidivism this article poses the questions.