The lived housing experience of the urban poor in Chengdu: Four distinct periods in the urban housing career

Current research on the housing careers of urban low-income groups, dominated by quantitative modelling, has discussed the housing predicament faced by the urban poor at length. While much is known about the factors influencing their housing careers, these studies have failed to provide a satisfactory understanding of the intricacy and depth of human struggles those vulnerable groups experienced in the urban housing market. This contributes a four-period model, through a dialogue with the established life cycle/life course theories, to the reconceptualization of housing career of the urban poor and depicts a vivid and continuous housing trajectory by analysing their lived experiences at each period. This paper finds that, in a highly constrained and segregated housing market, the housing problems experienced by low-income earners and their coping strategies are far more complex and variegated than traditional life cycle/course theory would predict. Factors at individual, household, community and even national levels are often interwoven and, more importantly, the combinations of these influences are constantly changing, sometimes repeating along their housing career forming a nuanced dynamism that has been largely overlooked by existing research.