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We regularly spotlight recently published geography research from the Society’s leading international journals: Area, The Geographical Journal, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and Geo: Geography and Environment.

This month, we share a paper from The Geographical Journal analysing the persistence of ethnic disparities and overcrowding in the UK housing sector.

For many of us, the biggest outgoing is the cost of the roof over our heads. We are living in a time of housing shortages, expensive rents, and poor-quality homes, to which the government’s answer is to “build, baby, build”. But are things that simple?

Rory Coulter is an urban geographer based at University College London whose work suggests not. His research explores why we live where we do, how housing affects our lives, and how the course of our lives shapes where we live.

Rory’s recent paper uses 2021 Census data to explore ethnic disparities in overcrowding across England and Wales. He found these disparities to be extremely persistent. Crucially, they cannot be explained away by other factors such as household size, occupation or location.

Whilst ethnic minorities make up around one fifth of the population in England and Wales, they represent half of all adults living in overcrowded conditions. We spoke to Rory to find out more.

What is overcrowding and why does it matter?

Overcrowding is inherently tricky to measure. In England and Wales, we typically assess it using the Bedroom Standard.

This metric is calculated by comparing the number of rooms households need, depending on the age, sex and relationships of residents, versus the number of rooms they actually have.

Whilst overcrowding hasn’t always been measured this way, it has been a concern amongst policymakers since Victorian times due to its consequences for people and places.

The impact of our homes on the course of our lives is profound and multifaceted. We know that not having enough space at home creates big challenges for people around establishing fulfilling family lives, for health, and around quiet spaces for people to sleep and children to study. These are bread and butter issues impacting how we experience life.Rory

Despite the significance of overcrowding, the past few decades have seen housing policy overwhelmingly focus on one thing: increasing the supply of houses. The idea is that this will, in time, solve other problems like overcrowding.

These issues are known to have disproportionately impacted people from certain ethnic minority groups for a long time. Yet, race has also disappeared from housing policy. Scholars like Rory believe it’s important we use data to expose inequalities in housing if we are to build a better future.

In England at least, race is no longer the major issue for housing policy it once was. It's no longer understood as something we need to address with dedicated interventions. There’s a sense that housing policy doesn't really need to talk about race and doesn't need to look into it. It’s critical that we use data to question these silences.Jake

Unveiling ethnic disparities in overcrowding

Rory’s statistical analysis explored how attributes – such as age, sex, occupation, and ethnicity - influence our risk of living in an overcrowded home. His analysis shows that longstanding ethnic disparities in overcrowding have by no means disappeared.

According to the data, all ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience overcrowding than White Britons, with those most at risk being Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Black African populations.

Bangladeshi people, for example, are ten times more likely to experience overcrowding than White British people.

Overcrowding is still with us two centuries after we first started to systematically record it. There remain very long-standing disparities between ethnic groups in the housing system that cannot be explained away by social class, place or migration experience. They are due to something else and this is not new. There is a massive disparity in terms of the amount of space different people from different groups have at home. We need to remember this, we need to study it, and we need to unveil it.Rory

Overcrowding not only disproportionately affects ethnic minorities but also certain places. Overcrowding hotspots are found in London as well as cities across the Midlands and Southern England.

Rory’s work shows that solving the housing crisis is not just a long-term numbers game. Instead, this crisis requires urgent, targeted measures that can help make people’s lives easier in the immediate future.

The housing system isn't working. Short-term interventions might help deal with overcrowding and its uneven distribution in the here and now. We cannot assume that if we somehow manage to build a lot of houses, things will just sort themselves out. Instead, we need to ease affordability pressure, particularly in the private rented sector. We also need to build greater numbers of large socially rented dwellings and these need to be genuinely low-cost homes that suit people’s varied needs.Rory

Next steps

Rory’s work continues to examine disparities in housing. He is currently using panel survey data to track how overcrowding affects people over the course of their life. To learn more about these issues, read Rory’s paper.

This research spotlight article was written by Safia Bailey (Cardiff University).

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