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The UK had three waves of COVID-19 infections and deaths between January 2020 and the start of 2022. ‘Age-standardised’ death rates were among the highest in Europe, although lower in the second and third waves. By January 2022, there had been 390 million recorded tests, about 20 million infections and 620,000 hospital admissions, and 52 million had had at least one dose of the vaccine. A total of 148,000 people had died within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test. The increase in deaths was enough to reduce life expectancy at birth. Deaths were very unevenly distributed by age, gender, pre-existing health conditions, disability, region, neighbourhood deprivation, ethnicity and occupation.
On 23 March 2020, UK government required most of the population to stay home, and measures were among the most stringent in Europe. However, locking down a week earlier would have saved an estimated 20,000 lives and might have allowed less stringency. Later lockdowns were also delayed. A House of Commons report in September 2021 described early policy as ‘one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced’.
Most people in the UK obeyed most of the restrictions on leaving home and mixing with other households most of the time. In the first national lockdown, most were at home for 23 or more hours a day and 41% were entirely at home for five or more days a week.
The UK birth rate fell, international migration fell and the death rate increased, meaning the total population reduced, against previous trends. The trend of growth in the number of households paused, as people moved in with others to reduce costs, loneliness and infection risk.
Home occupancy, overcrowding and time at home increased. People spent more time on sleep, childcare and leisure, and less on work outside the home, housework, personal care and travel. About 40% of employed adults worked from home. Experienced varied widely. There were difficulties in fitting multiple people and activities into congested home space, and in being home alone. Homes acted as refuges from the virus, but had to be defended from it. For some, the meaning of home was enhanced. Others felt home was no longer quiet, restorative or private. For many, home became a ‘prison’.
Staying home avoided exposure to COVID-19 and any other risks outside the home, but increased exposure to any harms at home. Scientists recognised early on that home was a major site of infection, with higher risk for larger, overcrowded households, or those with members working outside the home. In the UK, homeless people were provided with self-contained emergency accommodation to reduce risk. However, in contrast to some other countries, there was little policy or support to prevent infection at home in private households, where 98% of people lived, even where they contained infected or vulnerable people.
People responded by following rules strictly, by cleaning more, by moving people between households or by giving up work. However, the ability to respond was limited and unequal. Infections at home could have caused 26–39% of all UK pandemic deaths, or 38,000–58,000 deaths within 28 days of a positive test by the start of 2022. They certainly contributed to inequalities in deaths.
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically exposed weaknesses in UK housing’s relationship to the labour market and welfare system. Inequalities in household type, home occupancy, housing cost and security have contributed to the unequal impact of the disease.
Comprehensively charting fast-moving and inter-linked policy developments, Becky Tunstall assesses the position of housing and home in public policy, health and in peoples’ lives, and documents the most immediate responses to the pandemic in one convenient resource for students, scholars and practitioners.
Household and home were central to the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on physical and mental health, living standards and security. UK pandemic policies overlooked the risk of infection at home, which accounted for an estimated 26–39% of deaths. Home size, facilities and costs affected the ability to stay home, and to shield and isolate. Housing inequalities contributed to the marked inequalities in deaths.
Household and home size, occupancy, facilities, affordability and cost affected the wider experiences of staying home. Housing tenure and affordability affected the impact of income loss on living standards and risk of repossession. Policies to mitigate pandemic income loss had significant limitations.
By early 2022, pre-pandemic inequalities in housing and overcrowding, unaffordability, insecurity and homelessness remained or had worsened, while house price rises continued. Despite the great disruption, and policy innovation including housing homeless people and reducing poverty, in early 2022 things were building back the same, not better. The pandemic highlighted the role of family and friends as supplements to the state and market in providing income, material help, care, support and housing, and as a key source of the overall resilience of the UK.
This chapter describes UK households and homes pre-pandemic.
A total of 98% of people lived in private households, averaging two members. Like home, the household was to take on heightened importance during the pandemic as the basic unit for regulating social interaction, including by law. However, definitions of the ‘household’ vary and do not reflect all significant social and support networks.
When the pandemic hit, most people in the UK were well-housed, but there were inequalities and a significant minority were affected by poor-quality housing, insecurity and unaffordability, which many identified as a ‘housing crisis’. Despite the decline of deaths from infectious disease, poor housing still had a significant impact on health and longevity. Substantial proportions of the population did not have adequate private, work or state protection from the impact of income shocks on their housing security. Key organisations had been weakened by austerity, the housing safety net had been frayed, and a process of ‘familialisation’ had made family support increasingly important in access to housing and emergency help.
This book presents and interprets the stories of nine actors involved in the design, construction, management and habitation of third age housing in the UK. The primary motivation behind this book is to offer a creative practice research perspective to the field of gerontology – through anthropology by means of design – and, specifically, an architectural ‘insider’ view on the designed environments of retirement housing. One distinct intention of this work is to amplify the voice of architects among associated researchers, but also, through sharing aspects of the underlying multi-sited ethnography, give voice to some overlooked actors within the research field that are equally well-placed to contribute to design discussions of retirement-living products. Readers are invited to consider the question of how designers – professional or otherwise – can facilitate the wellbeing of older people in their homes, by optimising design details of these micro environments, in support of collective ambitions to age in place for as long as possible. Related to this, it is anticipated that readers might seek authentication of retirement housing – as products marketed as ‘specialist’ housing options – asking the question whether all housing should be age-friendly. The book is especially relevant to scholars in the fields of ageing and environmental gerontology, as well as architecture and the built environment. It will also appeal to industry professionals and practitioners from the housing sector more broadly. The visual vignettes and variety of writing approaches – from storytelling to reflective accounts – make this an accessible, transdisciplinary book. It may also be read by people preparing for later life.
Chapter 1 contextualises the actors storied within this volume, specifically baby boomer characters ‘Matthew’ and ‘Eileen’ storied within Chapter 3, and ‘Rose’ the ‘vulnerable friend’ storied within Chapter 4. Taking a popular perspective, these characters occupy a common phase of life – retirement – albeit separated by over two decades, with Matthew and Eileen being recent retirees, and Rose a generation ahead. They are also considered outwith the target market for the villa product presented within Chapter 5; Matthew and Eileen being ‘too young’ or ‘not ready’, and Rose being ‘too dependent’ or ‘too late’ for a retirement apartment. This chapter uses gerontological literature to locate these ‘known’ individuals within a theoretical population or spectrum of older persons. It explores key terms used to describe life course stages, such as ‘third age’ (Matthew/Eileen) and ‘fourth age’ (Rose), and associated degrees of independence and how these translate to housing needs. Thus this chapter offers readers a theoretical primer and backdrop for the cast of actors storied in this book.
Chapter 10 contains a research story that captures the position of the architecture student responding to the dual challenges of designing housing and accommodating an aged population. The story is located within the academic design studio of a fictional architecture school and presents a composite student character, August, while reflecting upon empathic design approaches to designing retirement housing on a ‘live’ development site. It explores how architecture students think about designing for older people and, crucially, how they might extend their awareness of housing needs and occupant aspirations in later life. This reflective practitioner account posits that the academic design studio can provide a space to explore research methodologies, involving short-term ‘cultural immersion’ or ‘empathic modelling’ and other ‘fast ethnography’ techniques, resulting in meaningful stakeholder engagement and potential to generate knowledge for and from design. In these terms the design studio can create a safe place to challenge ethnocentrism and the practice of self-design, as well as to question mainstream architectural behaviours and identities perpetuated by ‘starchitects’. The chapter also offers a behind-the-scenes view of architectural education that serves to support greater mutual understanding between designers of the built environment and researchers in environmental gerontology.
Chapter 3 contains the first research story, which reflects on the situated experiences, attitudes and opinions of a ‘baby boomer’ couple, the ‘Cees’, who are recent retirees or ‘third agers’ that split their time between Northern Ireland and England. This is a narrative account inviting readers to observe family members or close relations as emerging experts in preparing for and practising ageing in place. It draws upon a deep and part situated relationship with the informants while focusing on two research-framed events: a semi-structured interview conducted inside the informants’ English home, and a guided tour/walking interview inside a retirement housing development close to their home. The story recounts two recent property purchases and reflects on the motives for moving and respective meanings of home, as well as the couple’s preparedness for retirement living over the longer term. The Cees do not envisage moving for at least another ten years, and the idea of moving into retirement housing has not featured in their thinking, yet. In these terms the chapter explores a specific retirement lifestyle that temporarily disregards the idea of the ‘last’ home while attending to practical thoughts around future-proofing.
