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Private renting is worse for your health than smoking or unemployment, according to a recent study.
A new joint study by the University of Adelaide and the University of Essex determined that renters are likely to age more quickly than home owners.
Taking a sample of 1,420 adults in the UK, the study compared the impact of various housing elements such as ownership status, building type, location and heating on the ageing process. Biological ageing, the cumulative damage to body tissue and cells that occurs regardless of chronological age, was found to occur more quickly among those who rent.
Why? According to the researchers, the stresses of housing insecurity and unaffordability are the most likely factors driving this link.
Lead researcher Dr Amy Clair from the University of Adelaide shared: “Housing circumstances have a significant impact on biological ageing, even more so than other important social determinants, such as unemployment, and therefore health impacts should be an important consideration shaping housing policies.”
Importantly, the study also found that the health impacts of renting are reversible.
“All these factors are policy-amenable,” the report concluded. “What it means to be a private renter is not set in stone but dependent on policy decisions, which to date have prioritised owners and investors over renters. Housing policy changes can improve health.”
The University of Adelaide’s professor of housing research, Emma Baker, specified that “policies to reduce the stress and uncertainty associated with private renting, such as ending ‘no-grounds’ evictions, limiting rent increases and improving conditions, may go some way to reducing the negative impacts of private renting.”
While the study was based on UK residents, Dr Clair suggested that the findings may provide insights into countries with similar housing policies, citing Australia as an example.
“There are many similarities between the housing policy approaches of the UK and Australia – private renters in both countries have very limited security of tenure and face high costs,” Dr Clair observed.
She concluded that “it is therefore likely that private renters in Australia might also experience accelerated biological ageing” as long as the rental crisis continues.
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