Housing Our Humanity

: A journey through philosophy and policy to illuminate the possibilities of housing ethics

Abstract

This PhD is an exploration of housing ethics. It looks to the framework of housing ethics to
usher in new theoretically-led housing research that can propose alternate futures away from
the contemporary housing crises seen globally. The analysis moves from philosophy to policy
suggestions looking to open new ground for housing scholarship; it functions playfully and in a
manner that is focused more on opening up scholarship, rather than operating conclusively – as
such it is a fundamentally heuristic journey. It proposes two types of housing ethics: those that
regard the human-house relationship and those that regard the organisation of the housing
system. The former is explored by synthesising philosophy from Martin Hägglund, Emmanuel
Levinas, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant and Gaston Bachelard, among others. A view of the
human is proposed: that humans are disoriented by time but can, thanks to their imagination,
constitute themselves across temporal alterity. This is coupled with a claim on the centrality of
the homespace: that humans require housing stability, security and autonomy to have a space
away from the intensity of spatial multiplicity where they can imagine and constitute
themselves. I thus propose an ethic of the home based on stability, security and autonomy.
Then, approaches to organising the housing system that might produce these characteristics
are analysed to legitimatise a specific systemic design of housing system through this ethic.
Using the case studies of England and Canada, neoliberalism is dismissed as offering these
characteristics only to those who have a certain level of affluence. So, the research turns to
community-led housing (CLH); a mode of housing provision determined by communities that
looks to provide housing outside of dominant marketized approaches. Through a proposition
that housing ethics can be explored through imagined worlds and the valorisation of
speculative design as a means to access these worlds, empirical research was carried out with
CLH organisations in England and Canada. The housing that is speculated is housing that is
stable, secure and autonomous for all. Hence, CLH is legitimised as an ethical mode of housing
provision. Thinking about how to proliferate this small subsector of the two housing systems,
the research ends by suggesting the housing ethics of CLH, which seek community cultivation,
active participation and issue-free housing, should be translated into mainstream housing
delivery.

Date of Award	30 Sept 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Martin Parker (Supervisor), Harry Pitts (Supervisor) & Alex D Marsh (Supervisor)