Sufficiency in the Housing Sector

The social and ecological housing crisis requires a paradigm shift. A central lever is the reduction of the increasing per capita living space with high resource and energy consumption. A relevant target group are empty nesters – people who remain in the family house after their children have moved out. To enable them to downsize, the provision of alternative housing options (AHO) is considered a crucial sufficiency measure, which currently has significant research gaps. This paper analyses the societal conditions that enable people to move from a family house into a smaller dwelling in AHO based on an explorative qualitative interview case study with individuals who have realised downsizing. The results suggest that such downsizing can be conceptualised as a process of various interplaying components, i.e. push and pull factors, overcoming obstacles. While the idea of moving originated at the individual level, its realisation is to be situated at the systemic level. The AHO played a central role in realising the downsizing as a new material infrastructure with a higher quality of life through community and age-appropriate living. A tentative model was developed that can be embedded into existing transformation theoretical notions. Current societal conditions seem to not fully exploit the “AHO” measure. To make it more effective for a transformation, it must be more strongly situated at the systemic level, supported by systemic measures, ensure communal areas and participation and critically address ownership issues. This is discussed in the context of a solidary in contrast to the imperial mode of living.