Positive thinking

Koldo Casla, Newcastle University   Record numbers of families now rent privately in Britain. Twice as many middle-aged people rent their homes compared to 2008, and it has been estimated that about one-third of millennials will rent for their whole life. Renting the house you live in has its advantages as it gives you greater freedom of movement and saves you other costs: insurance, service charge, deposit, mortgage interest, to name a few. Yet, for most people, renting privately is not really a matter of choice. It is the result of stagnant wages and the fact that house values rise much faster than the economy . Britain is becoming a country of (reluctant) tenants. But the law does not keep the balance fairly between landlord’s interests and tenant’s rights. English law on rental evictions does not protect households’ security of tenure. A recent report by campaign groups Just Fair and Generation Rent shows that a system that allows landlords to evict tenants...

Sarah Rodgers, Swansea University   Britain has a housing crisis, not just in terms of a shortage of homes and sky-high prices , but in terms of the poor state of existing homes. Four in ten British homes don’t meet the basic criteria to secure occupants’ well-being, according to a recent survey. Researchers have looked into individual measures to improve housing and their effects on the people living in them. In New Zealand, for example – which has a similar climate to the UK – reduced asthma wheeze and fewer visits to the doctor were reported by people who had insulation improvements to their homes. In another New Zealand study, low-income tenants whose homes had fall-reduction modifications, led to reduced falls as intended. In the UK, though specific initiatives like these have been assessed, no one has looked at the effect that whole-home improvement can have on health, until now. Our latest research is the first to investigate how improvement of a whole h...