December 12th, 2017
Poor housing is strongly linked to poor health. But can poor health be improved by improving housing. To answer this question we examined all housing research which had assessed the health of residents whose houses had been improved. We searched for studies from anywhere in the world which had been carried out in the past 100 years. We found that • housing improvements can improve residents' health, in particular their mental health; • housing improvements can result in rent increases, which in turn can actually make people’s health worse; • the original residents may move to another area and not benefit from the housing improvements; and • housing improvements can have negative as well as positive effects on health.