Housing and mental health inequalities during COVID-19: the role of income and housing support measures
Ang Li,
Emma Baker and
Rebecca Bentley
Housing Studies, 2025, vol. 40, issue 6, 1379-1400
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted people’s mental health and wellbeing. Using a national dataset of >11,000 Australians collected before and during the first two years of the pandemic, this study examines housing and mental health effects of COVID-19, and the extent to which access to government income support (social security measures, crisis payments and wage subsidy), early superannuation withdrawal, mortgage and rent relief, and tenant eviction moratoriums offered protection. Results show that the mental health gap between private rental and more secure housing tenures and between good- and poor-quality housing widened during the pandemic. Government income support provided a social safety net and was important in buffering housing instability especially when strong eviction moratoriums were lacking. Mortgage relief measures were associated significantly lower risks of housing affordability stress. Strong eviction moratoriums were effective in reducing risks of residential instability and forced moves. The pandemic exposed health vulnerabilities generated from people’s housing circumstances, reinforcing the need for public policies to address these social inequities to improve health and wellbeing. Findings emphasise the importance of tenure security, housing quality and enforcement of rental market interventions during disasters and identify the benefits of policies providing income support and strong eviction protection.
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2024.2366961 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:40:y:2025:i:6:p:1379-1400
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/chos20
DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2024.2366961
Access Statistics for this article
Housing Studies is currently edited by Chris Leishman, Moira Munro, Ray Forrest, Alex Schwartz, Hal Pawson and John Flint
More articles in Housing Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().