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This paper explores two key themes that have enjoyed increasing attention in geography research in the last twenty years: geographies of care and experiences of precarity. It focuses on the perspectives of residents living in share houses during a strict COVID-19 lockdown in the city of Melbourne, Australia, drawing on 20 interviews conducted in mid-2020. In so doing, it contributes to understandings of care practices in 'non-traditional' households, providing a glimpse into the spectrum of care-full to care-less relations enacted in households responding to deep uncertainty and shifting connections to home brought on by a global pandemic. Within the day-to-day actions of occupants we highlight the networks of small acts of care-giving and resource sharing. We illuminate the spatial, emotional and relational micro-geographies of share houses to identify how precarity is negotiated amongst co-residents and draw attention to the implications of care-less policies and real estate practices. Our research answers the call for a greater emphasis on embodied home-making practices among group households by paying attention to the contingent relationships of care that they house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Public health measures are the main intervention to stop the spread of COVID-19. They rely on the adherence to everyday health behaviors, and depend on those at high and low personal risk of serious disease to comply. Young people are crucial to stemming community transmission, and are often living in shared housing and at a stage of their lives with more economic uncertainty than older groups. Public health messaging has relied on the mantra that we are 'in it together,' despite very diverse experiences of the pandemic across different groups. The central aim of this research is to understand and optimize young peoples' engagement with public health guidelines with the view to improve future adherence with public health initiatives. Method: Twelve young people were interviewed as part of this research, ranging from 18 to 24 years. Interviewees were chosen to ensure that there was a diverse range of opinions within the participant pool. Interviews were semi-structured with open questions and the flexibility to explore the topics of interest that arose. All interviews were fully transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: This study found that participants deemed the consequences of lockdown a greater threat than infection with SARS-COV-2. Participants expressed concerns about the government's handling of the pandemic. Some felt young peoples' interests were not represented by authorities. There were concerns that messaging was inaccurate, difficult to understand, and filled with statistical and medical jargon. These perceptions underpinned a sense that the guidelines could be broken in good conscience as well as result in accidental breaches of the guidelines. Though wider community factors were often cited as having a positive influence on health behavior, differences and division were seen to inspire trust or adherence. Conclusion: These findings provide an insight into the psychological, financial and physical difficulties young people face as a consequence of pandemic public health measures and lockdowns in particular. They highlight the need for better communication with young people to support and embed trust in authorities and the scientific and political community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As COVID-19 moves to an endemic state, employers have brought workers back to the office. Many workers prefer to continue working from home a portion of time, resulting in a gap between employee preferences for work from home and employer plans. Knowing who currently works from home a larger share of time and where this gap is narrowest across worker characteristics and locations helps explain where and for whom work from home is most likely to remain a permanent feature in the labor market. Using a relatively new data source, the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, Jason P. Brown and Colton Tousey find that the share of paid working days from home is higher for workers with higher income, those who live in more densely populated areas, and those with faster internet connections. They show that workers report a desire to work from home "post-COVID" a larger fraction of time compared with their expectations of their employers' plans for permitting work from home. Although employer plans on average have moved closer to workers' expectations over time, the size of this expectations gap varies with workers' income, age, urban environment, industry, occupation, and internet infrastructure, with the narrowest gap among higher income workers in more densely populated areas. These findings suggest that workers in larger urban areas will be more likely to benefit from the flexibility provided by work from home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global COVID-19 pandemic has led households to find creative ways to share resources to address isolation, stress, and anxiety. We build on these social experiments to suggest that sharing in housing and neighborhoods can lead to better mental health and wellbeing. The capabilities approach, popularized by philosophers Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, provides a theoretical perspective for integrating sharing options into housing and neighborhood design, regulation, and investment. We offer a framework delineating dimensions of sharing that has the potential to encourage more sharing and shift planning emphasis from housing as an outcome to one that promotes sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed complex connections between housing and health vulnerabilities. By investigating the share housing market in Sydney, Australia during the COVID-19 period, this paper examines these connections, highlighting health risks associated with shared facilities, overcrowding, and rental insecurity. Using data from Flatmates.com.au, Australia's dominant share housing platform, the paper analyses advertisements offering or seeking share housing in April and August 2020. The analysis highlights health risks, vulnerabilities and risk management strategies employed by those looking for share accommodation or new household members during the pandemic period as well as wider implications for housing and health policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on visualisations and aestheticisations of remote labour, i.e., working from home as a pandemic measure, through Internet photo-based memes. Drawing from Stuart Hall's model of encoding and decoding and using visual discourse analysis, the article reflects critically on humorous approaches to remote labour and performing oneself as a labouring body at the times of COVID- 19. It explores the curious social aspects of physical alienation from one's product of labour and colleagues, as well as the entanglement of workplace and private space. There is a paradox at play; there is the potential of convenience and informality, though simultaneously the labouring body is constantly present, potentially surveilled, expected to be always available. In this context, I am fascinated by the ways that this practice is encoded by memes and how these memes can be decoded either as political commentary to the situation or as oppositional / critical. Departing from my ongoing research at the University of Gothenburg, I categorise my empirical material in subclusters based on their theme, aesthetics, and rhetoric. The article thus focuses on remote labour pandemic memes which draw attention to the zoomification of labour: the liquification of space and time, the shared eerie intimacy with the boss and coworkers, the isolation and loneliness or the chaos of sharing the home and workspace, and the performativity of the zoom gaze. Additionally, it discusses remote labour memes which perform a direct critique on neoliberalism, by personifying the capital as the boss figure and by articulating humourous oppositional discourses against the exploitation, perhaps carrying themselves postcapitalist possibilities. In terms of theory, inspiration is drawn by the works of Franco 'Bifo' Berardi and Mark Fisher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new academic year began in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to allow for in-person learning, a fundamental part of medical education, some medical schools grappled with how to safely move students into shared on-campus housing. The authors describe a behavior-based strategy to safely move students from all parts of the United States to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. This strategy included a school-organized phased move-in that included 14-day quarantines for students coming from states with high COVID prevalence; requiring students to sign a COVID-agreement; the use of a phone-based daily COVID risk assessment; and facilitation of safe in-person social activities with peer monitoring of adherence to behavior guidelines. This strategy resulted in no known transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in student housing between July and October of the 2020 to 2021 academic year. The authors share this strategy in the hope that colleagues at other medical schools will find it useful in utilizing similar behavior-based strategies to keep students safe in shared housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new academic year began in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to allow for in-person learning, a fundamental part of medical education, some medical schools grappled with how to safely move students into shared on-campus housing. The authors describe a behavior-based strategy to safely move students from all parts of the United States to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. This strategy included a school-organized phased move-in that included 14-day quarantines for students coming from states with high COVID prevalence; requiring students to sign a COVID-agreement; the use of a phone-based daily COVID risk assessment; and facilitation of safe in-person social activities with peer monitoring of adherence to behavior guidelines. This strategy resulted in no known transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in student housing between July and October of the 2020 to 2021 academic year. The authors share this strategy in the hope that colleagues at other medical schools will find it useful in utilizing similar behavior-based strategies to keep students safe in shared housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moreover, insecurity is baked into the DNA of the rental sector, which means tenants are exposed to any major social or economic shocks. More than half of tenants remain for less than three years in their home ([2]), and a recent survey shows that a third of those looking for rental properties were doing so because they had been evicted from their home ([7]). 3 Chisholm E, Howden-Chapman P, Fougere G (2020) Tenants' responses to substandard housing: hidden and invisible power and the failure of rental housing regulation. [Extracted from the article]

Background: Any pandemic can influence the mental health of the general population, as it may restrict activities, change normal routine, affect social and economic wellbeing of them. Aims: This study was aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health of the general public in India Methodology: A cross-sectional web-based study was conducted for a period of 20 days among general population of India. The study used PHQ-4 and IES-6 scales to measure depression/anxiety and distress respectively. Multiple binary logistic regression was used for exploring the relationship of the personal characteristics with the prevalence of psychiatric illness. Results: The study enrolled a total of 1257 individuals with representation from 29 states of India with a mean (SD) age of 29.3 (9.7). Based on the combined PHQ-4 scale, 13.9% (n=174) had reported a moderate-severe level of anxiety or depression. Regarding distress, nearly three-quarters (n=942) had exhibited clinical concern for distress and more than a half (n=670) met the threshold for probable diagnosis of distress. The study found individuals who lived alone, lived in shared accommodation, or who did not have chronic illness were reported a higher prevalence of anxiety or depression, and accommodation type was associated with the distress level in comparison with their counterparts. Conclusion:, Our findings may be used to assist various a healthcare professionals and Government advisors to strategize targeted interventions as required for fighting this pandemic in India and across the globe, as COVID-19 posing a higher risk for a possible pandemic psychological illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic induced an increase in both the amount of time that households spend at home and the share of expenditures allocated to at-home consumption. These changes coincided with a period of rapidly rising house prices. We interpret these facts as the result of stay-at-home shocks that increase demand for goods consumed at home as well as the homes that those goods are consumed in. We first test the hypothesis empirically using US cross-county panel data and instrumental variables regressions. We find that counties where households spent more time at home experienced faster increases in house prices. We then study various pandemic shocks using a heterogeneous agent model with general equilibrium in housing markets. Stay-at-home shocks explain around half of the increase in model house prices in 2020. Lower mortgage rates explain around one third of the price rise, while unemployment shocks and fiscal stimulus have relatively small effects on house prices. We find that young households and first-time home buyers account for much of the increase in housing demand during the pandemic, but they are largely crowded out of the housing market by the equilibrium rise in house prices. • The COVID-19 pandemic increased time spent at home and consumption of at-home goods. • The COVID-19 pandemic also saw a rapid increase in house prices. • Strong empirical correlation between time/consumption at home and house prices. • We build a heterogeneous agent model of the housing market to study pandemic shocks. • Stay-at-home shocks explain almost half of the increase in house prices in the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world-wide massive expansion in the number of higher education students has occurred, they are considered as an important driver of urban change. Off-campus student accommodation in the form of shared rental housing has become increasingly significant all over the world, with studies suggesting that this is having important consequences for housing markets in the many cities. As a result, there is a growing need for research showing the behaviour and motivation of this group of tenants. The COVID-19 pandemic and implemented restrictions provided a unique opportunity to explore the behaviour of young tenants in an unusual situation. By survey conducted in such inimitable conditions, new general knowledge has been gained. To highlight a key result, it was found that students are a large and extremely flexible group of tenants who demonstrate no reluctance to terminate a tenancy agreement and return quickly to the family home. The empirical results show that they displayed no attachment to the rented flat, full reluctance to pay for the reservation of a place and good knowledge of the market situation, leading to the negotiation of lower prices and more favourable rental conditions. However, their motivation to stay and continue to rent included uncomfortable study conditions at the family home, a romantic relationship with a partner, a job in the city and strong existing social bonds. The results reported in this study can be useful for global investors on the rental real estate market. • The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the urban housing rental markets • Students have proved to be extremely adaptable tenants • Students appeared to be highly flexible tenants, thus renting for such a narrow group can be a very risky business [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]