Housing

The Importance of Housing to Community

Over the past century, there has been an attempt throughout the developed and the developing worlds to recognize a universal right to housing. During the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States, the Roosevelt administration legitimized the role of the federal government in creating and providing housing through the formation of large-scale public housing. This was followed shortly thereafter by the National Housing Act of 1949, which went further than any national government had previously gone in legitimizing a standard of housing for citizens by stating the need for “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family,” without necessarily codifying the terms of such a standard.

On the international stage, the United Nations created its own standardization of a basic level of housing quality through the passage of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which stated that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including … housing.” In addition, housing's importance as a driver of economic growth cannot be underestimated. In the developed world, residential transactions directly create a variety of job categories, including home builders, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and appraisers, just to name a few. Beyond these direct employees, such activity generates enormous multiplier effects on the general economy.

In many areas, a distinct architectural quality of housing helps define the urban area's character. For example, Baltimore's historic row-house model is uniquely identified with the city as a housing form unlike any other. In other cultures, there is an emphasis on vernacular housing, in which locally available resources and production methods are employed, as a way of maintaining local tradition rather than being influenced by a particular architect or designer. By emphasizing purpose over aesthetic appeal, such an approach allows neighborhoods and cityscapes to be created and maintained in a consistent manner and for habitants to feel a sense of connectedness as a result.

The Integration of Housing within Existing Sociological Theoretical Frameworks

Housing serves an important role within the context of one's physical and natural surroundings. The human ecology model, popularized by Bubolz and Sontag in 1993, emphasizes that the built environment serves as a conduit between the self and both the social–cultural environment and the natural environment. Similarly, housing also has a connection with each stage along the pyramid structure of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, first popularized in the 1940s. The most basic need is physiological. Housing serves this role by providing shelter and protection from the natural elements. Housing also serves the second stage of Maslow's pyramid by providing safety and security to its inhabitants, as a form of protection from potential harm. In the subsequent level, a sense of belonging, the home environment serves as a place in which families are raised and nurtured and where people interact with friends and other community members. The final two stages of the hierarchy, self-esteem and self-actualization, address the important roles that housing plays in people's identity and social status and in satisfying their creative side and allowing them to reach their full potential.

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