Currently, Horne’s team are examining the experiences of residents in low-income apartments and detached dwellings and the implications of electrical retrofitting for households struggling with energy bills.
Collaborating with Horne on a concurrent Australian Research Council Linkage Project evaluating housing design, Dr Louise Dorignon is collecting online interviews and photographs of homes for the new project.
Constructing a chronological account of housing stress before and after the pandemic will help reveal the challenges imposed by COVID-19, says Dorignon.
“This will show the unpredictable and combined vulnerabilities faced by low-income residents across different dwellings, such as energy poverty or coping with grief and isolation, and their interacting effects,” she says.
The new project will benefit from the established trust of participants and the pre-existing in-depth knowledge of householders’ homes and practices from the ARC Housing Energy Efficiency Transitions (HEET) and Housing Outcomes Metrics and Evaluations (HOME) projects.
“Through home-tours conducted in our previous research, these homes have been thoroughly depicted to us by those living there.
“We have really gained knowledge of these householder’s situations at a domestic scale, which will add analytical and empirical depth to this project.
“Using the new data along with that collected from the HEET and HOME projects will enable us to understand how policy can respond effectively to current challenges experienced by households that were already in housing affordability stress prior to the pandemic, as well as into the future.”
Project outcomes will be published late 2020 to assist governments at all levels in making the best housing policy decisions during and following the coronavirus pandemic.
The Housing Affordability Stress During COVID-19 project team is comprised of Professor Ralph Horne, Dr Nicola Willand, Dr Louise Dorignon and Dr Bhavna Middha.
Story: Chanel Koeleman
