This discussion paper by a group of scholars across the fields of health, economics and labour relations argues that COVID-19 is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis from which there can be no return to the ‘old normal’. The pandemic’s disastrous worldwide health impacts have been exacerbated by, and have compounded, the unsustainability of economic globalisation based on the neoliberal dismantling of state capabilities in favour of markets. Flow-on economic impacts have simultaneously created major supply and demand disruptions, and highlighted the growing within-country inequalities and precarity generated by neoliberal regimes of labour market regulation. Taking an Australian and international perspective, we examine these economic and labour market impacts, paying particular attention to differential impacts on First Nations people, developing countries, women, immigrants and young people. Evaluating policy responses in a political climate of national and international leadership very different from those in which major twentieth century crises were addressed, we argue the need for a national and international conversation to develop a new pathway out of crisis.

The decision in the early 1990s to cut back on the building of public housing intensified the already dire shortage of affordable housing and increased the marginalisation of the sector. To be eligible for public housing, new entrants usually have to be in ‘greatest need’. This study argues that the shift in the eligibility criteria for accessing public housing means that public housing estates increasingly reflect what Loïc Wacquant calls ‘advanced urban marginality’. The article assesses whether the features of advanced urban marginality that are identified by Wacquant capture and can be usefully used to analyse the shifts and contemporary characteristics of public housing. The article draws on existing data and in-depth interviews with 33 older (aged more than 65 years) public housing tenants in Sydney, Australia, to analyse the residualisation of public housing using the features of advanced marginality identified by Wacquant – ‘wage labour as a vector of social instability and life insecurity’, ‘functional disconnection from macroeconomic trends’, ‘territorial fixation and stigmatisation’, ‘spatial alienation and the dissolution of place’, ‘loss of hinterland’ and ‘social fragmentation and symbolic splintering’. The study concludes that although Wacquant’s analysis is useful and captures much of what has occurred in public housing estates in Sydney, in many instances, public housing remains a source of pride for its tenants and provides them with the basis for a good life.

For an increasing proportion of Australian households, the Australian dream of home ownership is no longer an option. Neoliberal housing policy and the financialisation of housing has resulted in a housing affordability crisis. Historically, Australian housing policy has afforded only a limited role to local government. This article analyses the results of a nation-wide survey of Australian local governments’ perceptions of housing affordability in their local government area, the possibilities for their meaningful intervention, the challenges they face, the role of councillors and councils’ perceptions of what levels of government should take responsibility for housing. Almost all of the respondents from Sydney and Melbourne councils were clear that there is a housing affordability crisis in their local government area. We apply a framework analysing housing policy in the context of neoliberalism and the related financialisation of housing in order to analyse the housing affordability crisis in Sydney and Melbourne. We conclude that in order to begin resolving the housing crisis in Australia’s two largest cities there has to be an increasing role for local government, a substantial increase in the building of social and affordable housing and a rollback of policies that encourage residential property speculation.

Community support services are an integral enabler of aging in place. In social housing, older adult tenants struggle to access these services because of the siloed nature of housing and health services. This study examined the provision of government-funded community support services to 83 seniors’ social housing buildings in Toronto, Ontario. Although there were 56 different agencies operating within the buildings, only about one third of older tenants were actually receiving services. There was a subset of services that were available in more than 80 per cent of the buildings, and the most widely accessed services were food supports, crisis intervention, transportation, caregiver support, and hearing/vision care. There were also many cases in which multiple agencies offered duplicative services within the same building, suggesting that there are opportunities for improving service coordination. Practice recommendations for increasing access to community support services among low-income older adults in social housing are provided.

Behavioural science has found growing application in applied public policy settings, offering a vast literature to bring to bear on apparent cognitive errors. The potential, however, is not without peril. Policymakers and scholars may draw unwarranted confidence that successful behavioural interventions from elsewhere will replicate in their institutional settings. In this research, I partner with Minneapolis Public Housing and use a design-based approach to identify interventions that can reduce eviction actions. This study presents three vignettes that demonstrate and categorize the mistakes behavioural science can make when it fails to understand how formal and informal institutional features influence decision-making. But, in integrating methods and theories from the design sciences, public policy and public administration, we have the potential to create behavioural interventions that fit the social context.

Access to affordable housing is a rising concern, and social housing is one approach to support low-income, older renters. A scoping review was undertaken to understand the characteristics of older tenants and social housing services to identify strategies to promote aging in place. Seven peer review databases were searched to identify relevant articles. A total of 146 articles were included. Almost all examined socio-demographic and health characteristics of older tenants, while 72 per cent examined social housing services, including eligibility policies, staffing, and access to on-site services. This review points to a high vulnerability among older tenants and highlights the importance of co-locating services on-site with a tenant-facing support staff to identify vulnerable tenants and link them to services. More research on tenancy issues (e.g., unit condition, rental management) is needed to identify new opportunities for social housing landlords to help older tenants age in place.

Many seasonal workers are housed in transitory accommodations, including tents and vehicles. In this study, we analyze the supply side of this problem by assuming that a public agent must house the workers through direct public investment. A peak load model is adapted to develop investment rules for the least-cost provision of seasonal worker housing, adding an interacting multi-season component to existing models. Based on this model and the data from three prototype projects, the majority of the least-cost investment would be in permanent, but seasonally occupied, housing.

In 1985, the Pinochet dictatorship reversed radical neoliberal urban development policy in response to economic crisis and political pressure mounted by the urban poor in alliance with the Catholic Church and the Left. The regime's free-market policies conflicted with a popular sector political culture that considered housing a right which the state must uphold. To implement its radical policies, the regime sought to change the understanding that housing was a right and the state a legitimate target of demand. However, it was unsuccessful. In the early 1980s, organised pobladores successfully brought the affordable-housing crisis to the forefront of public attention via the resurrection of pre-coup forms of direct action and pressured the dictatorship to back down from neoliberal dogmatism.

Over the last two decades decision makers have sought to address problems with large concentrations of poverty and minority ethnoracial groups in the cities of Western Europe and the Anglo-American world that are the direct result of the manner in which public housing was built in the early postwar era. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia have developed programs that introduce “social mix” into such public housing developments. These initiatives are designed to alter the social dynamics of places with high levels of concentrated poverty and ethnoracial minority groups that are believed to magnify the disadvantages of poverty and marginalization. In this paper, I argue that this is a destigmatization strategy, but not the same kind of destigmatization strategy that has been described in the literature. Using the example of Toronto's Regent Park, a large public housing development near downtown, I develop a research agenda for understanding the gap between a quasi-state agency's efforts to destigmatize public housing sites (“place destigmatization”) and the everyday destigmatization practices and experiences of residents (“personal destigmatization”). The paper begins with a review of the putative mechanisms linking socially mixed public housing redevelopment and outcomes for residents, including social capital, social control, role modelling, and changes to the political economy of place. This review finds little evidence of these effects in the literature. Consequently, I argue for an inductive approach to the study of the outcomes of social mix, rather than the common practice of judging such outcomes against the benchmark of close, intimate relationships between new, middle-class residents and existing public housing residents. I further argue that the “normalization” of the built form that is a major part of socially mixed redevelopment is a form of place destigmatization, and may alter both material practices and representational practices related to stigma, which have very real effects on the everyday experience of residents.

İstanbul has undergone a neoliberal restructuring over the past two decades. In this paper, we focus on two urban spaces that we argue to have emerged as part of this process—namely Göktürk, a gated town, and Bezirganbahçe, a public housing project. We examine these spaces as showcases of new forms of urban wealth and poverty in İstanbul, demonstrating the workings of the neoliberalization process and the forms of urbanity that emerge within this context. These are the two margins of the city whose relationship with the center is becoming increasingly tenuous in qualitatively different yet parallel forms. In Göktürk's segregated compounds, where urban governance is increasingly privatized, non-relationality with the city, seclusion into the domestic sphere and the family, urban fear and the need for security, and social and spatial isolation become the markers of a new urbanity. In Bezirganbahçe, involuntary isolation and insulation, and non-relationality with the city imposed through the reproduction of poverty create a new form of urban marginality marked by social exclusion and ethnic tensions. The new forms of wealth and poverty displayed in these two urban spaces, accompanied by the social and spatial segregation of these social groups, compel us to think about future forms of urbanity and politics in İstanbul.