Towards healthy homes: Exploring the effects of housing typologies on mental health in Australian capital cities

Recent growth in apartment living in Australian cities has raised concerns about mental health disparities between apartment and house residents, often attributed to poor construction quality and amenity levels. Notably, apartment residents in Australian capital cities are predominantly renters in the private market, with evidence that tenure instability and inability to control home quality can adversely affect mental health. While there is established literature on the mental health effects of either tenure type or dwelling type, few studies have examined their combined effects and spatial distribution on long-term mental health. To address this gap, this study examined: (a) the effect of dwelling type on mental health; (b) effect modification by tenure type; and (c) variations across Australian capital cities. Fixed-effects regression models were constructed to analyse panel data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey from 2001 to 2019. Results indicated that there was no significant difference in mental health outcomes based on dwelling or tenure type at the national level – a finding that advances understanding by ruling out strong direct effects of dwelling type on mental health. There was no significant variation in dwelling type effects across cities as a whole, but city-stratified analysis revealed that living in an apartment was associated with better mental health compared to living in a house in Greater Sydney. This suggests that the mental health effects of dwelling type may be context-sensitive, highlighting the need for future research to investigate within-city factors affecting mental health in residential settings.