Publication type
Journal Article
Author
Publication date
September 21, 2026
Summary:
This paper examines the relationship between local authority housing repairs and maintenance expenditure and the wellbeing of residents in England, in the context of significant funding cuts, between 2013 and 2021 using the Understanding Society dataset. Drawing on the environmental stress theory, ontological security and social determinants of health, the research explores how repairs and maintenance spending, viewed as a proxy for the quality and/or scale of repairs and maintenance interventions, impacts individual mental and physical wellbeing over time. Using two-way fixed effects models, the results reveal a significant positive association between repairs and maintenance expenditure in the one-year lagged period (t-1) for mental wellbeing and across all time periods (t, t-1, t-2) for the physical wellbeing for those in inadequate housing. The interaction housing conditions and spending suggests effects are concentrated towards tenants in inadequate housing with null results for those in adequate dwellings. This study contributes to the existing literature on housing and wellbeing by providing robust evidence of the effects of austerity-induced (dis-)investment. The results have important implications for policymakers, highlighting the need to create targeted investment in local authority properties to ensure equitable and sustainable living conditions for vulnerable populations.
Published in
Housing Studies
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2026.2730273
ISSN
2673037
Subjects
Notes
Online Early
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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