Collaborative Housing Communities through the COVID-19 Pandemic: Rethinking governance and mutuality

The national lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the prevalence and importance of informal mutual support in neighbourhoods and social networks. Mutual support structures and functions are strong in collaborative housing, in which people often intentionally form resident communities to enhance support practices. Using qualitative methods, this article examines how lockdown restrictions have impacted on practices of mutual support when the infrastructures of shared facilities and proximate neighbourliness were challenged in collaborative housing. There were ambiguous definitions of ‘households’ associated with collaborative housing when interpreting the lockdown rules to provide support. Shared values, commitments and length of time of established practices mattered when operationalising such support. Moreover, the lockdown helped re-evaluate the limits of mutual support. It provided a test for some communities to experience what changing care needs of individual members may mean to the communities, resulting in a more realistic appraisal of their local social capital.