EqualHouse - From Housing Inequality to Sustainable, Inclusive and Affordable Housing Solutions

Research Project, 2024 – 2027

Highly ambitious in its objectives and scope and innovative in its focus, conceptualisation and methodology, EqualHouse is the first research project to integrate all dimensions of housing inequality into one transdisciplinary and transnational research design. By analysing the many aspects of housing inequality, hitherto largely studied separately, it will make key contributions to understanding of housing inequality and how it can be tackled and respond comprehensively to the work programme priorities. EqualHouse is designed to identify the most significant dimensions of housing inequality across Europe, clarify their scale, form, causes and consequences and provide local, regional, national and European policymakers with robust guidance on how to address these inequalities in a sustainable, inclusive and affordable way. It will analyse the scale, form and dynamics of housing inequality comprehensively across the EU27 and UK, identify its new, acute and intersectional forms and explore its interaction with income and wealth inequality. The policy, regulatory, service and finance drivers of (and solutions to) housing inequality will be examined, in both national and international perspective. EqualHouse will propose solutions to address acute, intractable and new forms of housing inequality such as unaffordability, homelessness among refugees and migrants, labour market related housing inequalities and energy poverty. EqualHouse starts by considering policymakers and implementers concerns and involves them as partners in co-creating both the research and solutions to housing inequality, rather than relegating the production of these solutions to the project end-stage and generating and communicating them in a top down manner. To achieve these ambitious objectives, EqualHouse brings together a diverse and expert team of academics from across Europe and disciplines and housing policymakers, providers and end-user representatives.