Housing inequalities in a multi-scalar context: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on racialised minorities' housing experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the socio-economic inequalities experienced by ethnic and racialised minorities into sharp relief. Emerging evidence continues to indicate that racialised minorities experience disproportionate disadvantages in relation to health and social outcomes. Housing provision has been identified as a key area where racialised inequalities are particularly heightened, with the COVID-19 pandemic deepening processes of exclusion, precarity and dispossession. However, whilst such systemic inequalities have been exacerbated as a result of the current pandemic, these disparities are historically-entrenched and frequently normalised. This paper explores the impact and experience of housing governance on racialised minorities in a multi-scalar context. Focusing on neighbourhoods positioned on the socio-economic, cultural and geographical periphery of regional urban centres in Scotland and England, the paper identifies and evaluates racialised minorities’ housing experiences over the last two years. New insights are provided by exploring both the rationale behind practitioners’ policy responses to housing inequalities in a COVID-19 context, as well as the subsequent impact of such approaches on racialised minorities. By drawing on research conducted by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), the paper will further examine how housing provision is enacted and experienced differentially across places. The extent to which the pandemic is, and is not, an exceptional moment will be assessed in relation to both housing experience and broader strategies of place-based exclusion.