Confronting housing and health inequities: Wanted—critical transdisciplinary inquiry

Abstract

This critical commentary requests creative, critical, and inclusive dialogue about the persistence of inequitable housing and health inequalities. It complements numerous publications in housing and urban studies about environmental, ethnic, socio-economic, and residential inequalities in an era of growing neoliberal politics and policies that influence housing and health inequities. The main aim is to propose conceptual and methodological reforms in housing and urban studies. I posit that critical transdisciplinary inquiry enables innovative contributions to bridge the gap between persistent housing and health inequities and ineffective responses to them. Critical transdisciplinary inquiry includes ethical and moral values that acknowledge and confront housing and health inequities worldwide. The common actor/institutional framework used by academic researchers in housing and urban studies that devalues dominant power imbalances of private investors and property owners in housing markets is contested; the authority of local and national governing institutions to support alternative approaches is revalued. Given the ineffectiveness of private enterprises and public authorities in reducing housing and health inequities since the 1980s, community consortia should be supported to mainstream cooperative housing and expand their effective responses. Lessons from 19th-century housing and urban history, and coordinated responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, support this way forward.