This paper presents research findings that elucidate how community centres can help prevent and abate loneliness and thus enhance wellbeing. With the advent of loneliness interventions, research has focused primarily on referral processes rather than understanding how community spaces themselves facilitate sustained social connection over time. This study examines community centres as social infrastructure to understand what enables people to be involved in local communities. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 46 people across three community centres in low socio-economic areas of Melbourne, Australia. Four interconnected features emerged as critical to community centres' effectiveness as loneliness prevention infrastructure. First, centres need to be known to people who are seeking social connections. Second, centres can reduce loneliness by offering practical resources such as food relief or volunteering, because social relationships can develop subsequently. Third, feelings of safety, characterised by non-judgemental support and respectful staff practices, encouraged continued participation. Fourth, opportunities for active participation through formal and informal roles fostered belonging and reciprocity. Community centres function most effectively as loneliness prevention infrastructure when they address diverse needs beyond social connection alone, thereby reaching people who do not understand themselves as lonely, but who would benefit from pathways for gradual relationship building. The research demonstrates that effective social infrastructure requires investment in skilled staff who can create safe, welcoming environments and facilitate durable opportunities for meaningful participation. These dynamics suggest that loneliness interventions should be designed for long-term engagement rather than short-term connection, with particular attention to the interpersonal work that makes social infrastructure accessible and sustaining.

The global housing affordability 'crisis' highlights a policy failure shared across many jurisdictions and countries: a disconnect between the affordability challenge and capacity to act. The renewal of public housing estates is often a critical flashpoint in this disconnect and provides a lens for analysing policy and action in the social and affordable housing subsystem. This article analyses and conceptualizes why disconnect between challenge and capacity to act persists by asking: 'how do policymakers learn from public housing estate renewal in a multi-actor environment?' Specifically, we analyse how key actors describe and explain how public housing renewal 'works' and the learning processes that shape and reinforce actors' understanding and beliefs, framed within an advocacy coalition framework (ACF). The article draws on a series of stakeholder interviews involved in the design and delivery of public housing estate renewal in Australia. The findings highlight how key actors responsible for policy assessment and evolution share key beliefs and understandings relating to process, financing and implementation of renewal programmes. These beliefs are collectively reinforced and shared through a series of learning processes that, while enabling incremental policy evolution, remain nested within a hierarchy of beliefs that inhibit significant policy innovation or change.

This research explores the impact of Australia’s housing crisis on temporary migrants. It examines how housing challenges affect temporary migrants’ wellbeing, their ability to contribute economically, and the distinct housing issues they face.More than 10 per cent of Australian residents are on temporary visas and these migrants play an important role in the country’s economy. Despite this, the impact of the housing crisis on this group receives little attention. Temporary migrants are also often blamed for worsening the crisis, despite being ineligible for most housing supports. This research delves into how these circumstances impact temporary migrants and how systems can be improved to boost their wellbeing and economic contribution.

This article focuses on everyday infrastructures of care through the lived experiences of older women in state-initiated housing in Bangladesh, and the women's capacity to live well in such housing. In the last two decades, a series of diverse re-housing projects targeting low-income and informal settlement dwellers has been initiated by the Bangladesh government. However, these projects have largely failed to provide a safe and secure dwelling place, particularly for the most vulnerable residents, such as older women. Drawing on in-depth qualitative case-study research and narrative analysis this paper focuses on the everyday role and nature of care infrastructures for older women facing precarity in the Bhasantek Rehabilitation project (BRP) in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. In doing so the research contributes to the developing infrastructures of care literature in two key ways: by directing critical scholarly attention to the everyday experiences of older women in the context of re-housing initiatives in Bangladesh; and calling for an expanded care infrastructures research agenda that is led by scholars and activists working in and originating from, countries of the global majority.

Loneliness increasingly features in public discourse as a pressing health issue. Loneliness manifests as a feeling of being separate, distanced or isolated, and it is therefore a profoundly spatial phenomenon. Yet, engagement with experiences of loneliness has been sporadic in the discipline of geography. This paper develops the concept of loneliness geographically as a way to research the places, relationships, routines, infrastructures and mobilities that deepen or soften experiences of loneliness. In pulling together isolated strands of inquiry within and beyond human geography, it highlights three avenues of spatial inquiry into loneliness that will strengthen research efforts in this field: the structural and political causes of emotions; the spatial and temporal dimensions of social infrastructures; and the affordances of differently situated social relationships. A geographical approach to the study of loneliness as a feeling of connection that is situated in place offers social scientists new avenues for understanding how loneliness is enabled and experienced, and how it might be prevented and abated.

It is my pleasure to respond to and reflect on Francesca Francesca Perugia’s (2022) chapter about the attributes of social resilience in refugees’ settlement patterns and housing choices. First, it is refreshing to see a discussion of housing, as it is an often-forgotten aspect of the refugee settlement journey. Despite its importance, not much has been written on housing as part of the refugee settlement process. As Fozdar and Hartley (2014) demonstrate, safe, appropriate and secure housing is crucial for the integration and settlement of humanitarian entrants, as establishing a home is a vital part of the regaining of ontological security (Dupuis and Thorns, 1998). However, as they and others clarify (Fozdar and Hartley, 2014; Ziersch et al, 2017), recently arrived humanitarian entrants and asylum seekers in Australia experience barriers in securing housing and often need to go through multiple housing moves in their first few years in the country. This has been the result of years of minimal government investment in social housing across the country and an ongoing fiscal housing policy that has led to a national housing affordability crisis. It has also been a result of ongoing inadequate income support for refugees settling in Australia. Housing is crucial for developing the feeling of belonging and a sense of home in the community (Levin, 2016). Yet, for refugees and asylum seekers who arrive in Australia without any social or cultural capital, finding secure housing is almost impossible; what used to be migrant gateway suburbs are no longer affordable for newly arrived communities (Easthope et al, 2017), and refugees and asylum seekers (as well as other ethnic and migrant groups) (see, for example, Milligan et al, 2011; Flatau et al, 2015; MacDonald et al, 2018) have been facing endemic discriminative practices in the private rental housing market in Australia

The home and its physical structure, the dwelling, often seem inseparable. Yet for migrants, these two concepts sometimes appear as the two extreme ends of the home-migration nexus, where home stands at one end and the physical dwelling at the other. Migration scholars have often emphasised the dynamic nature of home while also being grounded, and migrants have always tried to bridge this gap, often utilising the physical structure and materialities of their homes. This chapter discusses the physical aspects of the migrant home, often constructed – sometimes at the same time - in both the host country and the home country. First, the chapter provides a critical overview of scholarship on the migrant house in the hostland, viewed from the perspectives of both the host society and the migrant dweller. Second, the chapter discusses the materiality of the migrant home (including furniture, paintings and objects) and the way it contributes to the integration and wellbeing of migrant dwellers. Third, it discusses literature on the migrant house built in the homeland, with money earned in the host country, as another form of migrant architecture, even if the migrant never dwells in it. I argue that although migrant houses have been portrayed in a negative light by host and home societies, they have been instrumental to migrants' integration and sense of belonging in their home environments.

While there is evidence from the general population that experiences in public spaces can affect health and wellbeing, there is relatively limited research exploring this relationship for young people from refugee backgrounds, who are at higher risk of poor health. This paper draws on interviews, mapping and photovoice with 10 young people from refugee backgrounds and interviews with 16 service providers working with refugee youth, recruited through a survey and community and service networks. All interviews were analysed thematically, with photographs and maps also included in the analysis of interviews with young people. A typology of health-related experiences in public spaces was identified - including socialising and connection, a sense of welcome, a sense of safety, and relaxation and restoration. Each of these aspects of public space experiences could be health promoting. However, cutting across this typology was a theme of racism and discrimination, which affected health and wellbeing directly and indirectly through limiting young people's public space landscape.

This project examines whether current social housing allocation and matching policies and practices meet the needs of applicants or tenants and maximise social housing sector performance and efficiency outcomes. It looks at how to optimise housing stock allocations based on individual needs (including the role of support) and neighbourhood and community needs (avoiding concentrations of disadvantage and potential antisocial behaviour).‘Allocation’ is the rationing of access to social housing, and ‘Matching’ is the process of trying to best fit the requirement of allocated households with the attributes of the available stock—including size, location and service access, as well as in terms of community harmony and individual wellbeing.The research reviewed international and Australian policy, interviewed stakeholders across four jurisdictions (QLD, VIC, TAS and SA), developed an evaluation framework (Social Return on Investment - SROI) for housing allocation strategies.The international policy review suggests the Choice-based lettings model could enhance tenants’ choice and reduce stigma; local allocation plans could improve tenant composition and social mix in specific neighbourhoods; policies to address underutilisation of social housing should be carefully considered; and programs integrating support services onsite to address tenants with complex needs should be more widespread. The research findings suggest Governments should view the social housing sector as part of the larger housing market rather than as a separate, standalone system. The sector would benefit from expanding its limited target from tenants with highest need for housing integrated with other support, through to people with high need for housing but no need for other support, to people in need of affordable housing only in various forms.

This introductory review essay examines some of the key concepts and approaches framing the ongoing debate around mixed communities and housing regeneration policies around the world. This review summarizes past positive and negative side effects of social mix reported in the extant international literature. It then describes social mix housing policies in the Global East and the Global South, including China, Japan, South Korea, sub-Saharan Africa, and Singapore. In moving forward, the review essay adopts Galster and Friedrichs's challenge to think about the progressive reformation of a "social mix version 2.0"-what it might look like, and what the policy implications of such an improved version of social mix might be. Three policy implications are discussed: intentionality of social mix; mixed-income housing transit-oriented design; and learning from the Global East and Global South.

"Social resilience and refugee housing: questioning the shift in responsibility for settlement: a reply to 'The attributes of social resilience: understanding refugees' housing choices' by Francesca Perugia" published on May 2022 by Bristol University Press.

During the past 30 years, social mix has been on the policy agenda of many countries as a tool for deconcentrating urban disadvantage and enhancing social inclusion. However, these projects often take diverse forms in different institutional and policy contexts. In this article, we compare two separate studies of current urban regeneration programs in Australia and Israel. The comparative analysis reveals major similarities and differences regarding the physical and social outcomes of social mix. Our findings suggest that although both projects did not declare to create socially mixed communities, the resulting resident makeup was mixed. Despite differences in the projects' physical designs, both resulted in two communities living side-by-side but not interacting meaningfully, and therefore not gaining from the possible benefits of social mix. We argue that international comparative studies of social mix policies in different contexts allow for a better understanding of the practicalities of social mix processes for policymakers and planners.