Housing systems, their institutions and their resilience

The idea of resilience is employed across disciplinary boundaries to encompass individuals, families, societies and organisations within them. In short, “resilience is not just about ‘bouncing back from adversity’ but is more broadly concerned with adaptive capacity and how we better understand and address uncertainty in our internal and external environments.” (Gibson and Tarrant, 2010)

Work currently being undertaken within CaCHE, building on the UK Housing Review, is seeking to assess the evolution of the housing system between the start of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007/08 and the COVID crisis in 2020, and in particular in what respects its resilience was strengthened or undermined during this period.

This project provides a valuable opportunity to extend this work into the COVID-19 crisis itself, by focussing on three market-based institutions:

  • Mortgage industry (UK)
  • Housebuilding industry (England and Scotland)
  • (Retail) private landlords (England and Scotland)

Team: Prof Mark Stephens (Lead Co-Investigator), Dr Philip O’Brien, Dr Craig Gurney, Dr Bilge Serin, and Dr Gareth Young (Knowledge Exchange)

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This is a part of a wider project being undertaken by CaCHE exploring housing policies and the COVID-19 pandemic.