Housing amid a pandemic
The challenges of COVID-19 from the experience of women in precarious housing
Keywords:
housing precarity, Covid-19, gender and housing, housing policiesAbstract
Starting from the housing precariousness experienced by women in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, the paper aims to understand, on the one hand, the measures created to react to the impact of the pandemic in the housing sector and on the other hand, to comprehend their impact, feasibility, and effect in the context of places marked by precariousness.
Methodologically, it is based on a survey of women living in precarious housing, complemented by twelve in-depth interviews and systematized analysis of the proposed housing legislation to tackle the pandemic in 2020.
Through the experience of women, the findings point out that the reaction to the pandemic with regard to poor housing was neither sufficient nor adequate, increasing inequality for those for whom ‘staying at home’ was, or still is, problematic.
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