COVID-19 shone light to the problems of shared health environments — part 1
Cowritten by Alessandro Paone
This 2 part blog condenses the research of Alessandro Paone and Pinja Piipponen’s MA degree project (RCA, Service Design, 2020). Their project Household Health explores the topic of shared health environments and flat sharing in the new normal.
Visit www.rcaservicedesign.com/projects/household-health for more.
1. Future of Living and Flat Sharing
People are moving to cities like never before
According to the UN, the urban population will most likely increase from 4 close to 10 billion by 2050, nearly doubling our cities. It is getting crowded to say the least. Already 3,6 million people live in overcrowded homes in the UK and a lot of young professionals find it hard to move out of their parents homes when hoping to start their own independent lives.
The UK has been experiencing a housing crisis ever since Thatcher’s Right to Buy Act and shared homes have been the only solution for many. The rents have been increasing year by year and the queues for social housing are years long. Foreign investors have bought a whopping 1 in 5 of all houses in the market as investments which have skyrocketed the prices.
“I didn’t move in with my boyfriend because that was the
next step for us, we did it because we didn’t want to live with strangers.”
- Woman, 27, London
Sharing a home is the new normal
Many young professionals, students and people without bigger families have resorted in living in flat shares, there are 206 000 households housing non related adults in London alone. And it is not just the younger generations — people in their thirties and forties are also finding renting for just themselves way too expensive. The cost is not the only pro: many urbanites feel lonely in the buzz of mega cities and sharing a home has created a way of forming small communities as an option next to the traditional family model.
Our generation, millennials, is called the Generation Rent which here in London means that 50% of this age group are predicted never to own a home. The direction these current events are pointing towards, shows us the housing situation is not looking any different any time soon. We are looking at a future of ever denser living spaces, and due to the pandemic we are experiencing as we speak, now a recession and many will face financial struggles for years to come.
It is safe to say the amount of flat sharers will increase and more people will join in the lifestyle of sharing their lives and bathrooms with people they might not know at all before signing their agreements.
“I live in a flatshare because the prices in London are ridiculous.
As a student I have no other choice.”
- Student, 24, London
Future of pandemics
Many of us have lived with a mindset of trust — trusting that no matter what happens our doctors will know what to do. This has now changed. Rising levels of antimicrobial resistance are causing deaths of getting infections we used to be able to fight with antibiotics, and the amount of novel infectious diseases such COVID-19 will increase in the following decades.
Sadly, the science community was expecting a pandemic like this already last fall. “Experts warn the world grossly unprepared for Pandemics”, said the headline of The Guardian last September — only 3 months before the first case of corona virus in China.
As we know now, our cities are getting denser, which also means we are expanding our unnatural living areas closer to the wilderness, in this case, specifically the wild animals. Zoonotic disease spread, meaning a virus originating from an animal species jumps to people, is predicted to increase. Around 60% of new infectious diseases come from animals, according to the WHO.
There is a strong link between our planet’s wellbeing, the rapid population growth and overuse of resources and the novel infectious diseases.
The COVID-19 has been said to stem from a market selling wildlife for food, and the swine flu we went through in 2009 also came from food production. Nations are ramping up the food industry to feed the growing population and it appears, changing one’s diet to a plant based one might impact not only the climate crisis, but the infectious disease crisis as well.
The unfortunate statement is, that climate change will not be solved with this lock down period and the crisis will continue to impose us to more threats of viruses. As the ice caps keep melting, they are said to start revealing viruses buried beneath their layers hundreds of years ago. Tourism is currently on hold, but we have been doubling the amount of travelling in the past decade which also escalated the rapid spread of corona. The future of travel will have to change, and so does the way we live together.
If flat sharing and co-living communities will be the social, sustainable and financially living option for masses, what does the future of living look like, when we are predicting a future of many more pandemics by 2050?
Get in touch!
To answer to some of these questions, a service called Household Health was created to support tenants in decision making and coming to an agreement on common health actions. Visit the website for more information and book a meeting with the designers:
www.rcaservicedesign.com/projects/household-health
pinja.piipponen@network.rca.ac.uk
