We know the consequences of poor housing on the physical health of those who experience it. According to annual report of the Abbé-Pierre Foundation on poor housing, the figures speak for themselves: 4 million people currently suffer from it.
franceinfo: We would like to come back with you on the psychological consequences that it can have, on adults, as on children.
Claude Halmos: Poor housing has very serious psychological consequences. First of all, it strikes very deeply at the image that people who experience it have of themselves, and of their value. Because they unconsciously align this image with that of their habitat (how to feel worthy when you live, without hope of leaving it, in an unworthy place?).
And all the more so because by leaving them there, society tells them that they don’t deserve better. They therefore feel different, excluded, and this leads them to a shame of themselves which gnaws at them, and pushes them to isolate themselves. And poor housing also affects the minimum physical well-being that a human being needs to preserve his psychological balance.
How ?
Being poorly housed means living in discomfort that transforms every moment of daily life into violence that affects both the body and the psyche. We are, because of the narrowness of the places, deprived of privacy and, because of fuel poverty, in the cold, humidity and mold.
Due to the lack of sanitary facilities (or their condition), the most elementary acts – washing or going to the toilet – become hardships. And one lives moreover, permanently, in insecurity. Due to electrical installations, which are often dangerous, and the vulnerability to illnesses that these living conditions entail.
We are therefore in a situation of distress and powerlessness which evoke those of an abandoned infant, and which are psychologically inhuman and destructive.
What are the consequences for family life?
Poor housing affects the life of the couple and of course, that of the children. They share the shame and isolation of their parents (they cannot invite their friends) and their feeling of injustice and exclusion. The lack of space obliges them – which is always very disturbing for them – to share their life as a couple, and deprives them of any intimacy with their brothers and sisters. And their development itself is disturbed.
The cramped conditions interfere with learning to walk. Access to autonomy (learning to wash oneself, or to manage alone in the toilets) is made difficult by the absence of toilets, and school learning by noise, and promiscuity.
And their parents often feel (unconsciously) too guilty for not being able to give them a better life, to allow themselves to exercise, with them, the authority they would need. We can therefore only hope that the problem of poor housing will finally be considered, by our society, as a priority.