Insights into Housing and Community Development Policy
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U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development | Office of Policy Development and Research
both preventive care and direct treatment.
37
Studies have found that shared housing can
better support children with health issues
ranging from asthma to malnutrition.
38
An array of economic and social factors
influence the positive impact that shared
housing can have on residents’ health.
Health Considerations for Shared Housing During a Public Health Emergency
Shared housing can be associated
with negative health impacts if
it results in overcrowding. This
association is especially pertinent
given the time of publication, where
the COVID-19 pandemic continues
to affect the way of life across the
world, and, by some metrics, seems
to be spreading more quickly in
areas with higher residential density.
The connection between disease and
density, however, is not immediately
obvious. With COVID-19, some rural
recreation areas in the United States
have seen similar rates of infection
spread as in dense urban areas.
The geography of socioeconomics
also plays a large role. According to
urbanist Richard Florida, “There is a
huge difference between rich dense
places, where people can shelter in
place, work remotely, and have all of
their food and other needs delivered
to them, and poor dense places,
which push people out onto the
streets, into stores and onto crowded
transit with one another.” These
complexities have been addressed in
the shared housing literature through
the “voluntary vs. involuntary” lens,
namely, delineating shared housing
behavior and outcomes based on the
constraints under which individuals
either choose or are forced to live in
shared housing.
Public health situations like the
COVID-19 national emergency,
ongoing at the time of this paper's
publication, can present residents
sharing housing with some
challenges, which are similar to
challenges residents may face around
other household expectations, like
chores, rules about visitors, and
other household activities, but are
compounded due to the severity of
the risks to health and livelihood.
Shared housing residents who have
come together through shared beliefs,
like in many co-ops and other types
of intentional communities, may be
more willing to develop and comply
with new household policies during
emergency scenarios. For example,
certain medium-sized co-ops in
Oakland, California; San Francisco,
California; Berkeley, California;
Boulder, Colorado; Providence,
Rhode Island; New York City, New
York; and Austin, Texas have all
published household policies that
they developed and co-signed under
COVID-19, many categorizing their
allowable activities into different
phases of the pandemic. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
released safety information on
living in shared housing during the
COVID-19 pandemic, including
limiting or avoiding nonessential
visitors and stocking COVID-19
prevention supplies, such as soaps,
sanitizers, tissues, trash bins, and
if possible, cloth face coverings.
Maximizing health and happiness
during crisis situations involves
a level of trust between shared
housing residents that there will
be compliance with agreed-upon
household expectations. It may also
involve meeting certain housing
quality standards to ensure that any
resident who becomes affected by the
virus can self-isolate without harming
their housemates.
Pandemics such as COVID-19 are
once-in-a-lifetime events, and, while
governments should always invest in
emergency preparedness, pandemics
may present characteristics of
a “black swan” event (that is,
rare and unpredictable events
despite post-hoc rationalizations
for predictability), requiring ad
hoc policies to respond to crisis
scenarios. How residents and owners
of shared housing make contingency
plans to protect their health and
safety during public health crises
may play a lesser role in the overall
health of residents in their long-term
relationship with shared housing.
Sources: Florida, Richard. 2020. The
Geography of Coronavirus. CityLab.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/04/
coronavirus-spread-map-city-urban-
density-suburbs-rural-data/609394/
Tina, Cynthia. 2020. COVID-19
Resources. Center for Intentional
Community. https://www.ic.org/
covid-19-resources/
Center for Disease Control. 2019. Living
in Shared Housing. https://www.cdc.gov/
coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/
shared-housing/index.html
Social relationships are a major benefit
of shared housing and can mitigate the
substantial negative health effects that often
accompany social isolation and loneliness.