‘I felt trapped’: young women’s experiences of shared housing in austerity Britain

Abstract

In Britain, the number of young single people living in shared accommodation is on the rise. While sharing may be positive when voluntarily chosen, those who are forced to share accommodation may have far more negative experiences. This paper examines how recent changes to the Shared Accommodation Rate of housing welfare have resulted in people having to share accommodation until the age of thirty-five. Our focus is on the experiences of young single women who are in receipt of housing benefit and are living on low or no income. The paper is based upon forty biographical interviews with people who have lived, or are living in, shared accommodation with strangers. It emphasises how, although having a roof over their heads, women living in shared accommodation often do not feel at home. Shared living resulted in domestic space being experienced not as a site of refuge, but as a place of insecurity and fear. The paper highlights how cuts to housing welfare have removed a vital infrastructure of care, leaving some young women in a position of heightened vulnerability. We hence propose that vulnerability should be conceptualised as a structural condition rather than an inherent gendered disposition.

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