A home for life? Understanding the housing aspirations of older homeowners

This thesis investigates the housing aspirations of older homeowners in England, with a particular focus on those living in low-value homes. In the context of an ageing population and the growing pressures on housing, health, and social care systems, the study seeks to understand how older homeowners housing aspirations are shaped by lived experience, and the extent to which these aspirations are realisable within the contemporary housing system. Despite being the largest tenure group among people aged over 65, older homeowners—especially those living in low value homes—remain under-researched and risk exclusion from policy discourse and housing support mechanisms.

Adopting a qualitative, participant-centred methodology and undertaken in collaboration with Sheffield City Council, the research utilises semi-structured interviews to capture the housing aspirations of low-income older homeowners, living in three areas of Sheffield. The study employs an analytical framework, rooted in an understanding of housing aspirations as the product of a dialectical relationship between objective possibilities and subject preferences, and draws on concepts from the capabilities approach and occupational science to explore how housing aspirations are operationalised in later life.

Findings reveal that older homeowners’ housing aspirations are dynamic and multidimensional. They encompass subjective possibilities, to include emotional attachment and the relationship with home, interacting with objective possibilities shaped by financial issues, available housing possibilities and structural inequalities. The research identifies a persistent gap between policy narratives that promote independence through ageing-in-place and the realities faced by older homeowners who attempt to achieve their housing aspirations in the contemporary housing system. The study contributes to critical debates in housing, ageing, and social policy by advancing an understanding of older homeowners as active agents in shaping their housing futures. Proposing locally responsive policy frameworks that more accurately reflect the diversity of housing aspirations in later life.