The housing careers of young people provide significant insight into the housing system they enter - its opportunities and limitations. There is a strong history of work in housing studies to understand the progress of individuals through the housing market. This paper assesses the value of housing careers and housing pathways as analytical devices at a time when uncertainty marks young people's movement through the housing markets of developed economies. This paper considers the movement of young people as they progress through the housing system from the family home in twenty first Century homeowner societies. Younger people's pathways are shown to have slowed, often not end in homeownership, and are not simple linear progressions towards homeownership. Movement through the market is now more dependent on factors external to the housing system. While the concept of a housing career remains relevant, questions of unequal housing outcomes need to be addressed from a wider perspective, one that acknowledges generational schisms as well as the differences between individuals even in one generation.

Introduction Where a person lives, the characteristics of their housing and neighbourhood environment influence their exposure to climate-related hazards and vulnerability to associated mental health impacts. This suggests that the built environment may be a promising focus for integrated policy responses to climate change and public mental health challenges. However, few empirical studies have focused on the role of the built environment as an important mediator of climate-attributable mental health burden. The proposed scoping review seeks to identify and synthesise existing conceptual models and frameworks linking climate change to mental health via built environment pathways. We aim to provide a preliminary overview of the housing and neighbourhood pathways through which climate change may impact mental health, which will inform future empirical work in this emerging area of research.Methods and analysis A systematic scoping review of the global peer-reviewed and grey literature will be conducted in accordance with Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework and Joanna Briggs Institute recommendations. Included articles must present a conceptual model or framework incorporating relevant built environment pathways through which climate change may impact mental health and well-being. Relevant models and frameworks will be identified through systematic searches (for English-language reports) of Medline, PsycINFO, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science and grey literature databases. Two reviewers will independently screen the article titles, abstracts and full texts, with conflicts resolved by a third reviewer. Data extraction will occur using a predefined template. The presentation of findings will conform to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews, including a narrative synthesis of the role of housing and neighbourhood factors in the relationship between climate change and mental health, as identified from the existing literature. The review will lay essential foundations for future empirical research and place-based policy responses to the mental health consequences of a changing climate.Ethics and dissemination The scoping review will be a secondary analysis of published data, for which ethics approval is not required. The results will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed publication and targeted distribution to stakeholders involved in climate change, built environment and health research and policymaking.Study registration Open Science Framework: doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XR74C.

Many people live in cold homes that are hazardous to health. In the absence of high-quality observed data, researchers have measured cold housing and assessed its prevalence using secondary proxy indicators. Proxy measures previously used in literature include self-assessed warmth of the home, perceived energy affordability, financial inability to heat the home in winter, and local climate zone. Using matched in-home temperature sensor data from 502 Australian homes, we assess the validity of these proxy measures by estimating the degree of association with measured indoor temperature. We also examine twelve correlated socio-demographic characteristics to explore promising alternative proxy measures. Self-assessed perception of home warmth was shown to be the best existing proxy indicator of cold indoor air temperature (OR 2.5, CI 1.4 to 4.3), with climate zone (OR 2.4, CI 1.6 to 3.8) also shown to be a strong measure. Perceived energy affordability (OR 1.1, CI 0.7 to 1.9) and financial inability to adequately heat the home (OR 1.0, CI 0.6 to 1.6), were shown to be unsuitable proxy measures. Of the correlated socio-demographic characteristics, heating appliance type (electric heater OR 3.0, CI 1.4 to 6.2), household structure (living alone OR 2.5 CI 1.2 to 5.5), built date (built <1990 OR 2.11, CI 1.38 to 3.23) and flooring type (timber floor OR 1.99, CI 1.23 to 3.22) were strong indicators of cold indoor temperatures, and would make sound proxy measures. Our assessment of the reliability of existing and potential proxy measures of cold home temperature suggests a need to carefully select proxies, based on their known or established validity.

Housing influences life chances and trajectories through many roles, differently and in relation to the socioeconomic characteristics of people and population groups. This article uses the concept - 'housing niches' to present an alternative, bottom-up, plural and bundled view of housing and advantage . Using a large, representative sample of an Australian rental population (the Australian Rental Housing Conditions Dataset [ARHCD]), our analysis describes housing as multidimensional, bound across other aspects of people's lives. Understanding advantage requires methodologies that capture risk as cumulative, mediated by multilevel social processes that expose and select particular populations to particular residential environments that contribute to people's multiple disadvantage. Housing niches compel research and debate on comprehensive housing policy as not only necessary, but to have an imperative of cumulative risk and more broadly, inequality and poverty reduction.

Housing inequality is far more than a housing matter. To discover how housing inequality has been used across disciplines, and how this may inform future housing research, we performed a systematic scoping review. We found that housing inequality provides multiple understandings as well as a variety of uses, for example, as a measurement tool, a conceptual device, or as subject matter. To draw together useful lessons from this conceptually diverse body of work, we identify four principle uses of 'housing inequality' in the literature - an outcome, an experience, a product, and a construct. These four framings offer a level of conceptual clarity for thinking about, and researching, the different expressions of housing inequality. It contributes to housing research by providing an approach for taking into account the multiple and complex roles of housing, and its distribution and impacts across society.

Understanding the patterns and impacts of population migrations within Australia is key for governments and providers of housing, infrastructure and services to be able to plan where they will prioritise resources. New AHURI research critically assesses the population projection methods available to Australian decision-makers and planners.Population projections are modelled either as top-down models, where larger spatial units are used to control the smaller area projections, or as bottom-up models, where the smaller area projections are added together to form the population projection of the larger spatial units.For example, with a top-down projection Australia’s total population can be used as a control total for the state and territory projections and, in turn, these are used to control the smaller regional populations projections. In the bottom-up model, the projected populations of the states and territories would be added together to form the total population projection of Australia. A significant finding is that because different users need different levels of understanding about future population changes, it is unlikely the existing methods could be unified into one nationally consistent approach that would be accurate enough for everyone’s needs. However, results can be improved by users prioritising good quality, reliable and timely data; ensuring consistent approaches and shared information sources; and making sure they have a good understanding of each method’s strengths and weaknesses.

This research investigates the Australian rental sector during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic and considers priorities for governments; tenant experiences and reflections on the effectiveness of assistance and interventions; changing tenant aspirations; and the priorities for emerging responses.The research highlights how ‘nimble’ the Australian policy community had been in response to COVID-19, and the success of many of their rapid interventions. The challenge is how to sustain assistance as Australia moves from the health emergency to maintaining (perhaps very long-term) assistance.There is an enduring need for policy action and innovation focussed on the rental market through all stages of a major event such as a pandemic. This includes the period during which the impacts are less acute or visible, and this intervention is needed to provide support in the face of second order effects, including increased demand for housing. In addition, there is a need for policies and strategies that build resilience in the rental market at all times. Key initiatives could include reform of tenancy legislation, the provision of a larger stock of affordable housing available through the social housing sector, and measures to sustain affordable entry into home ownership. There is scope also to consider ways in which affordable housing provision could be better integrated with national urban planning aspirations through the economic and housing market development of smaller regional cities.

Housing that is in poor physical condition has direct negative health impacts for occupants, is more expensive to run and reduces Australia’s ability to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This research investigates what is needed to lift the quality of Australian housing to align with international standards so as to address problems associated with aged and ill-performing housing stock in both the owned and rented sectors.The research explores different strategies for improving housing through voluntary programs and mandatory legislation, and found:a national strategy to improve residential building quality should be developedmandatory disclosure of dwelling energy performance could improve how markets consider the performance of houses offered for sale or lease more appropriate accounting methods of the benefits provided by improved housing standards are needed.To improve the building quality of Australian housing stock, it is important to investigate how and why governments make policy about the quality of Australian housing stock. Change is difficult because of both the challenges of getting government attention and pressure from strong property industry lobbyists, but it is not impossible. One of the sharp lessons from the case studies is that having research evidence is not enough; change needs key elements such as building a convincing narrative to tell a plausible story of a social problem (including coverage of the evidence in the popular media) together with a ‘coalition of support’.A national strategy to improve residential building quality should be developed and include the following regulatory mechanisms: improved performance standards for new houses; mandatory disclosure of dwelling energy performance; and minimum housing standards for the rental sector.

For the past two decades, researchers and policy makers have known very little about conditions within Australia's housing stock due to a lack of systematic and reliable data. In 2022, a collaboration of Australian universities and researchers commissioned a large survey of 22,550 private rental, social rental and homeowner households to build a data infrastructure on the household and demographic characteristics, housing quality and conditions in the Australian housing stock. This is the third and largest instalment in a national series of housing conditions data infrastructures.

To date, much of the health focus of environmental policy has been on preventing physical health impacts of environmental exposures. Recent research has however highlighted increasingly concurrent mental health effects and its consideration is an emerging requirement for many governments and their agencies, yet there are limited universal mental health assessment tools for environmental exposures. This paper details the findings of a scoping review that evaluated assessment tools used to measure psychological impacts from environmental exposures and pollution, as reported in recent peer-reviewed literature (2000-2022). Across the 126 papers identified in our review, a wide range of tools to assess mental health impact were identified. We document a clear recent upswing of research interest in the mental and psychological impacts of environmental exposures, and an overarching concern for air pollution from industry, traffic, and fires. A majority of studies utilised standardised assessment instruments, but there was little consistency in the way that these were combined or deployed. The dominant mental health outcomes of interest in these studies were depression, anxiety, and mental and psychiatric health. The findings of the review identify a need and opportunity to develop a best-practice approach to consistently assess the mental health impacts arising from environmental exposures. Future work is needed to define the most appropriate choice and application of assessment tools to evaluate adverse mental health impacts from environmental exposures. This will support a more universal, coordinated and cross-jurisdiction approach for the assessment, quantification and targeted response to addressing mental health impacts arising from environmental exposures.

A large proportion of Australia's housing stock offered for private rental or socially let is of poor quality, which has implications for residents' health and well-being. This problem has arisen from historically weak regulation of housing standards and under-investment in public housing services, both features of Australia's neoliberal housing regime. In this paper, we reviewed the institutional contexts of two policy settings used to address problems of housing quality: the Homes Act 2018 (UK) and the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act 2017 (Aotearoa-New Zealand). From these two case studies, five institutional shifts required to reprioritize the housing-health nexus in Australia were synthesized: (1) policy objectives should explicitly link housing conditions and health outcomes; (2) community awareness and sector advocacy should be harnessed to overcome complex structures of government; (3) policy approaches should foster collective social responsibility; (4) mandatory requirements should be made transparent and objective; and (5) robust protocols for tracking progress should be developed and applied.

This research examines the preferences and trade-offs of tenants during social housing retrofit programs, particularly in regard to implementing circular economy (CE) practices. The study looks beyond the relatively narrow consideration of energy efficiency, to respond to the broader requirements of the social housing sector—to incorporate and balance tenant needs with provider mandates, budgetary limitations, and wider social policy.Retrofitting, or upgrading, existing social housing stock has been proposed as a cost-efficient solution to concerns around energy efficiency, thermal performance, and quality issues.The research found that households’ preferences for housing retrofit and upgrade options did not necessarily align with evidence of optimal retrofit priorities and do not align with the typical activities which receive government funding. For example, commonly provided retrofit measures (such as draft sealing) were not widely valued, while less common interventions that were less focussed on energy efficiency (such as a deep clean) were highly regarded by consumer households.The objectives underlying retrofit programs are rarely explicit and vary greatly between stakeholders: social housing providers may be largely motivated to assist their tenants to avoid energy poverty; industry groups seem principally focussed on sustainability outcomes; and many tenants’ main motivation is wanting homes that are more liveable, efficient, clean and warm. These different, and often competing, objectives obviously limit successful outcomes. Retrofit and quality improvements that are undertaken with a short term focus, based on whatever funding or opportunities are available at that point in time, constrains all stakeholders from longer term planning or strategic coordination, but also reduces the opportunity to use CE principles in retrofit activities.

The social housing sector provides housing to some of society's most vulnerable people, disproportionately housing people with disabilities and chronic health conditions, the aged and people unable to work. These groups are often more susceptible to health impacts from poor temperature conditions within their home. In this paper, we examine temperature conditions in Australian social housing, explore tenant experiences and reflect on possible remediation responses. Using a novel contact-free delivery protocol for data collection, temperature was measured in 36 social housing dwellings over a 3-month springtime period. Semistructured interviews were conducted with occupants to better understand their experience of (adverse) indoor temperature conditions. On average, participants spent 35 per cent of time across the study period in temperatures outside the WHO guidelines (18-24?). Most participants perceived their homes to be cold or very cold during periods of cold weather, and many considered energy unaffordable. Building conditions, such as poor sealing around windows and doors, lack of insulation and inadequacy of space heating appliances, were of greatest concern to participants. Participants' preferences for remediation work suggest that considerable benefit could be gained from making homes more energy efficient through draft sealing and insulation.

Background Houses in mild-climate countries, such as Australia, are often ill-equipped to provide occupants protection during cold weather due to their design. As a result, we rely on energy to warm homes, however, energy is becoming increasingly expensive, and evidence is emerging of a sizable burden to population health of being unable to afford to warm homes causing exposure to cold indoor temperatures. Methods We use a large longitudinal sample of adult Australians (N = 32,729, Obs = 288,073) collected annually between 2000 and 2019 to estimate the relationship between exposure to energy poverty and mental health (SF-36 mental health score), and a smaller sample from waves collected in 2008-9, 2012-13, and 2016-17 (N = 22,378, Obs = 48,371) to estimate the relationship between energy poverty and onset of asthma, chronic bronchitis or emphysema, hypertension, coronary heart disease, and depression/anxiety. Fixed effects and correlated random -effects regression was used in models. As exposure and outcomes were self-reported, we tested alternative specifications of each to examine bias from measurement error. Findings When people can no longer afford to warm their homes, their mental health declines significantly (by 4.6 -points on the SF-36 mental health scale, 95% CI -4.93 to -4.24), their odds of reporting depression/anxiety or hypertension increases by 49% (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.09 to 2.02) and 71% (OR 1.71, 95% CI 1.13 to 2.58) respectively. The findings for the decline in mental health were supported in additional analyses that tested alternative specifications of the exposure measure, including co-resident verification of respondent reporting of being able to afford to warm the home. Support for an effect of energy poverty on hypertension was less clearly supported in these same sensitivity models. There was little evidence of an effect of energy poverty on asthma or chronic bronchitis onset in this adult population noting, however, that we could not examine exacerbation of symptoms. Interpretation Reducing exposure to energy poverty should be considered as an intervention with clear benefits for mental health and potential benefits for cardiovascular health. Funding National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia. Copyright & COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Australia is considered by many to be a warm climate country and hence winter cold and its health effects are often overlooked. The majority of the Australian population live in temperate climate regions, which are heating -dominated and experience cold wintertime conditions. The prevalence of cold in Australian homes has to date been rarely measured or estimated, and the few studies that do are based on proxy data that estimate a low prevalence (around 5 %). This paper tests these proxy measures, using high resolution temperature data on indoor temperature from 100 homes across temperate Australia. The data were assessed using the World Health Organization's Housing and Health guideline for minimum indoor temperature (18 degrees C), which provides an internationally recognised benchmark for defining cold in homes. Across the sampled homes, 81 % were below 18 degrees C on average across the whole of winter (June-August 2022). Average winter indoor temperatures were 16.5 +/- 2.7 degrees C across all homes, with no significant difference between locations. These early findings suggest that the problem of unhealthily cold homes in Australia is likely to be significantly more prevalent than previously estimated. Far from affecting 5 % of Australian households, the affected population may be 10 times this value. These initial findings have important implications for how we model health impacts and develop policy. This early release data from a recently commenced large environmental monitoring project is of timely importance. It challenges our understanding of the prevalence of cold housing in Australia context, flagging the pressing need to increase policy attention in advance of winter.

Researchers across disciplines are increasing attention to cold housing environments. Public health, environmental and social sciences, architecture, and engineering each define and measure cold housing environments differently. Lack of standardisation hinders our ability to combine evidence, determine prevalence, understand who is most at risk––and to formulate policy responses. We conducted a systematic, cross-disciplinary review of literature to document the measures used. We examined benefits and limitations of each approach and propose a conceptualisation of cold housing: where temperature is too low to support optimal health and wellbeing of inhabitants, measured using one or a combination of economic, ‘objective’, or subjective approaches. More accurate data on home temperatures for all population groups, combined with an understanding of factors leading to cold homes, will enable appropriate policy response to reduce adverse health effects and costs. Policies targeting better building standards and energy subsidies both improve temperature conditions in housing environments.

Background Exposure to cold indoor temperature (< 18 degrees Celsius) increases cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and has been identified by the WHO as a source of unhealthy housing. While warming homes has the potential to reduce CVD risk, the reduction in disease burden is not known. We simulated the population health gains from reduced CVD burden if the temperature in all Australian cold homes was permanently raised from their assumed average temperature of 16 degrees Celsius to 20 degrees Celsius. Methods The health effect of eradicating cold housing through reductions in CVD was simulated using proportional multistate lifetable model. The model sourced CVD burden and epidemiological data from Australian and Global Burden of Disease studies. The prevalence of cold housing in Australia was estimated from the Australian Housing Conditions Survey. The effect of cold indoor temperature on blood pressure (and in turn stroke and coronary heart disease) was estimated from published research. Results Eradication of exposure to indoor cold could achieve a gain of undiscounted one and a half weeks of additional health life per person alive in 2016 (base-year) in cold housing through CVD alone. This equates to 0.447 (uncertainty interval: 0.064, 1.34; 3% discount rate) HALYs per 1,000 persons over remainder of their lives through CVD reduction. Eight percent of the total health gains are achievable between 2016 and 2035. Although seemingly modest, the gains outperform currently recommended CVD interventions including persistent dietary advice for adults 5–9% 5 yr CVD risk (0.017 per 1000 people, UI: 0.01, 0.027) and persistent lifestyle program for adults 5–9% 5 yr CVD risk (0.024, UI: 0.01, 0.027). Conclusion Cardiovascular health gains alone achievable through eradication of cold housing are comparable with real-life lifestyle and dietary interventions. The potential health gains are even greater given cold housing eradication will also improve respiratory and mental health in addition to cardiovascular disease.

Increasing numbers of relatively affluent people are endeavoring to reduce everyday consumption and waste in response to environmental and social concerns. This paper explores five activist lifestyles and grassroots social movements that aim to reduce everyday consumption to uncover who, why, what and how households reduce consumption. Our understanding of everyday consumption captures the design of the house, the physical dwelling and the experience of day-to-day living. We seek to understand the lifestyle and identity characteristics, motivations, barriers, meanings and cultural beliefs that influence social norms towards less consumption. Our review reveals that most people begin from raised consciousness and concern about production and consumption practices. Evidence is building that shows, for many people, living a less consumptive, more collaborative, simple, frugal, downshifted life is beneficial to human health and well-being and highlights part of the success of these movements and lifestyles. Activist lifestyles should be promoted to a relatively affluent public as creative, meaningful, and satisfying and not as sacrifices to be made. This central finding offers a potentially useful behavioral lever to complement structural level sustainable urban transitions.

Each year the proportion of Australians who rent their home increases and, for the first time in generations, there are now as many renters as outright homeowners. Researchers and policy makers, however, know very little about housing conditions within Australia’s rental housing sector due to a lack of systematic, reliable data. In 2020, a collaboration of Australian universities commissioned a survey of tenant households to build a data infrastructure on the household and demographic characteristics, housing quality and conditions in the Australian rental sector. This data infrastructure was designed to be national (representative across all Australian States and Territories), and balanced across key population characteristics. The resultant Australian Rental Housing Conditions Dataset (ARHCD) is a publicly available data infrastructure for researchers and policy makers, providing a basis for national and international research.