Can Our Housing Environments Impact Loneliness? A Tale of Two Studies

Loneliness is a pressing public health issue associated with mental health issues like depression, anxiety and suicide. Although a quintessentially individual experience, loneliness is shaped by wider relational, environmental, cultural, socioeconomic and political circumstances. Given the rise of loneliness post-COVID-19, broad-scale solutions that change local built environments to prevent or reduce loneliness may have universal benefits for the population’s mental health. This chapter draws from two research studies. The first is a recent systematic review investigating the relationship between built environment elements (for example, housing, public space, green/blue spaces) and adult loneliness. The second is the Alone Together study, conducted in Australia in 2020–2021, looking at relationships between housing, mental health and loneliness. The evidence suggests that the relationship between loneliness and the built environment is complex, contextual and multidirectional, emerging from interrelationships among the built environment and the broader sociocultural and economic milieu, which intersect with individual experiences, needs, values and practices. While specific aspects of the built environment can reduce loneliness, our results so far do not support a deterministic, one-to-one relationship between any single built-environment characteristic and loneliness.