Crowded Houses, Gendered Spaces and Generational Differences: The Inter-Relationship Between Housing Politics and Household Dynamics in New Crossroads

This is the ninth of the research reports from the GRUPHEL, part of the regional programme on Gender Research on Urbanisation, Planning, Housing and Everyday Life. The report focuses on the realities of severely overcrowded accommodation in family dwellings; the eways in which young women and men adapt of insufficient access to independent housing; strategies to access affordable housing; the gendered and generation specific nature of social networks that facilitate access to housing; the ways in which young women and men respond to housing and household context by redefining their households and expectations of and aspirations for the formation of their own families; and the ways in which overcrowded housing contexts shape relationships between young women and men, and their positioning within households, the neighbourhood, and the city more generally. Sophie Oldfield is a senior lecturer in the Department of Environmental & Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town. Joanne Boulton is a graduate student in the Department of Environmental & Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town.