A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. Houses use a range of different roofing systems to keep precipitation such as rain from getting into the dwelling space. Houses generally have doors or locks to secure the dwelling space and protect its inhabitants and contents from burglars or other trespassers. Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain one or more bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. A house may have a separate dining room, or the eating area may be integrated into the kitchen or another room. Some large houses in North America have a recreation room. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock may share part of the house with humans.
The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for the average adult. The cost of housing, such as the rent for an apartment, usually makes up the largest proportion of this estimate, so economists track the real estate market and other housing cost indicators as a major influence on the poverty line. Individual factors are often used to account for various circumstances, such as whether one is a parent, elderly, a child, married, etc. The poverty threshold may be adjusted annually. In practice, like the definition of poverty, the official or common understanding of the poverty line is significantly higher in developed countries than in developing countries.
A roommate is a person with whom one shares a living facility such as a room or dormitory except when being family or romantically involved. Similar terms include dormmate, suitemate, housemate, or flatmate. Flatmate is the term most commonly used in New Zealand, when referring to the rental of an unshared room within any type of dwelling. Another similar term is sharemate. A sharehome is a model of household in which a group of usually unrelated people reside together, including lease-by-room arrangements. The term generally applies to people living together in rental properties rather than in properties in which any resident is an owner occupier. In the UK, the term "roommate" means a person living in the same bedroom, whereas in the United States and Canada, "roommate" and "housemate" are used interchangeably regardless whether a bedroom is shared, although it is common in US universities that having a roommate implies sharing a room together. This article uses the term "roommate" in the US sense of a person one shares a residence with who is not a relative or significant other. The informal term for roommate is roomie, which is commonly used by university students.
A dormitory, also known as a hall of residence or a residence hall, is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university students. In some countries, it can also refer to a room containing several beds accommodating people.
A boarding house is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms on a nightly basis, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months, and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "room and board," that is, some meals as well as accommodation.
A studio apartment, or studio condo also known as a studio flat (UK), self-contained apartment (Nigeria), efficiency apartment, bed-sitter (Kenya), or bachelor apartment, is a small dwelling in which the normal functions of a number of rooms – often the living room, bedroom, and kitchen – are combined into a single room.
A bedroom or bedchamber is a room situated within a residential or accommodation unit characterised by its usage for sleeping. A typical western bedroom contains as bedroom furniture one or two beds, a clothes closet, and bedside table and dressing table, both of which usually contain drawers. Except in bungalows, ranch style homes, ground floor apartments, or one-storey motels, bedrooms are usually on one of the floors of a dwelling that is above ground level. Beds range from a crib for an infant; a single or twin bed for a toddler, child, teenager or single adult; to bigger sizes like a full, double, queen, king or California king). Beds and bedrooms are often devised to create barriers to insects and vermin, especially mosquitoes, and to dampen or contain light or noise to aid sleep and privacy.
A household consists of one or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is important to economics and inheritance.
A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, in Edinburgh, tenements were developed with each apartment treated as a separate house, built on top of each other. Over hundreds of years, custom grew to become law concerning maintenance and repairs, as first formally discussed in Stair's 1681 writings on Scots property law. In Scotland, these are now governed by the Tenements Act, which replaced the old Law of the Tenement and created a new system of common ownership and procedures concerning repairs and maintenance of tenements. Tenements with one or two room flats provided popular rented accommodation for workers, but in some inner-city areas, overcrowding and maintenance problems led to shanty towns, which have been cleared and redeveloped. In more affluent areas, tenement flats form spacious privately owned houses, some with up to six bedrooms, which continue to be desirable properties.
A single-family detached home, also called a single-detached dwelling,single-family residence (SFR) or separate house is a free-standing residential building. It is defined in opposition to a multi-family residential dwelling.
Single room occupancy is a form of housing that is typically aimed at residents with low or minimal incomes, or single adults who like a minimalist lifestyle, who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed, chair, and sometimes a small desk. SRO units are rented out as permanent residence and/or primary residence to individuals, within a multi-tenant building where tenants share a kitchen, toilets or bathrooms. SRO units range from 7 to 13 square metres. In some instances, contemporary units may have a small refrigerator, microwave, or sink.
Local Housing Allowance (LHA) was introduced by the government of the United Kingdom on 7 April 2008 to provide Housing Benefit entitlement for tenants renting private-sector accommodation in England, Scotland and Wales. The LHA system introduced significant changes to the way Housing Benefit (HB) levels are restricted and how benefit is paid. It did not replace Housing Benefit - it is just a different way of calculating entitlement under the existing Housing Benefit scheme: the Local Housing Allowance is based on the 30th percentile of local rented accommodation, while the 50th percentile or median was used from the introduction of the policy until 2011. LHA rates relate to the area in which the housing-benefit claim is made. These areas are called "Broad Rental Market Areas", defined as "where a person could reasonably be expected to live taking into account access to facilities and services", and a selection of rents in the area are used to determine the LHA for each category of housing in the area.
A rooming house, also called a "multi-tenant house", is a "dwelling with multiple rooms rented out individually", in which the tenants share kitchen and often bathroom facilities. Rooming houses are often used as housing for low-income people, as rooming houses are the least expensive housing for single adults. Rooming houses are usually owned and operated by private landlords. Rooming houses are better described as a "living arrangement" rather than a specially "built form" of housing; rooming houses involve people who are not related living together, often in an existing house, and sharing a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room or dining room. Rooming houses in this way are similar to group homes and other roommate situations. While there are purpose-built rooming houses, these are rare.
Multifamily residential is a classification of housing where multiple separate housing units for residential inhabitants are contained within one building or several buildings within one complex. Units can be next to each other, or stacked on top of each other. Common forms include apartment building and condominium, where typically the units are owned individually rather than leased from a single building owner. Many intentional communities incorporate multifamily residences, such as in cohousing projects.
Poverty in the United Kingdom is the condition experienced by the portion of the population of the United Kingdom that lacks adequate financial resources for a certain standard of living, as defined under the various measures of poverty.
A housing unit, or dwelling unit, is a structure or the part of a structure or the space that is used as a home, residence, or sleeping place by one person or more people who maintain a common household.
The Welfare Reform Act 2012 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom which makes changes to the rules concerning a number of benefits offered within the British social security system. It was enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 8 March 2012.
A microapartment, also known as a microflat, is a one-room, self-contained living space, usually purpose built, designed to accommodate a sitting space, sleeping space, bathroom and kitchenette with 14–32 square metres. Unlike a traditional studio flat, residents may also have access to a communal kitchen, communal bathroom/shower, patio and roof garden. The microapartments are often designed for futons, or with pull-down beds, folding desks and tables, and extra-small or hidden appliances. They differ from bedsits, the traditional British bed-sitting room, in that they are self-contained, with their own bathroom, toilet, and kitchenette.
The bedroom tax is a United Kingdom welfare policy whereby tenants living in public housing with rooms deemed "spare" experience a reduction in Housing Benefit, resulting in them being obliged to fund this reduction from their incomes or to face rent arrears and potential eviction by their landlord. The policy was introduced as part of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 passed during the Premiership of David Cameron. Bedroom tax is the most commonly used term for the policy, especially by critics of the changes who argue that they amount to a tax because of the lack of social housing for affected tenants to downsize to. The bedroom tax is also referred to as the under-occupancy penalty, under occupation penalty, under-occupancy charge,under-occupation charge or size criteria.
Housing in the United Kingdom represents the largest non-financial asset class in the UK; its overall net value passed the £5 trillion mark in 2014. Housing includes modern and traditional styles. About 30% of homes are owned outright by their occupants, and a further 40% are owner-occupied on a mortgage. About 18% are social housing of some kind, and the remaining 12% are privately rented.
