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that high housing costs are a frustrating but inevitable product of the housing market. When this model is operative, it leads people to see affordable housing as an almost impossible ideal, or to reject the term "affordable housing" as an oxymoron. Participant: #e "rst thing that comes to mind with housing is owning your own home, but it's not what it's cracked up to be. Mortgages are at an all-time high. Sometimes I wish I wasn't a homeowner, I wish I was just renting again, because every time I turn around, you got to "x this, you got to "x that, you got to have money for this, you got to have money for that. And unless you're wealthy, you really have to work for that. In addition to these most dominant, top-of-mind understandings of housing, participants used several other models to think about what housing is. C. !e Place to Lay Your Head model. Housing was o%en considered in the most basic terms as having "a place to lay one's head." #is model represents a binary distinction: If housing is a place to lay your head, you either have housing, or you don't. When people use this model to reason about housing, variations in quality or conditions easily fall out of mind. Participant: Housing is anywhere with a roof over your head. It doesn't even have to be a stable roof. — Participant: In one word, "shelter." A place to provide a roof over your head, an address that's yours, some place where you're indoors. D. !e Housing Is Protection model. #e public associates housing with protection—protection from weather, and protection from a dangerous outside world. According to this way of thinking, housing is important for both physical and emotional safety, providing both bodily security and emotional refuge from a stressful, hectic world. Having a home that protects emotional safety means being able to customize one's living space to be a relaxing space that provides comfort and personal meaning. Part of this model is the understanding that, in order to be safe, housing must be stable. #ere was considerable focus on stability across the interviews, and analysis showed that people assume that stability is a necessary condition of safe housing. Participant: Your house is supposed to be your safety. So wherever you live, you're supposed to be comfortable and safe. — Participant: Security comes in a couple of different forms. One is just personal safety. And two would be how you feel. I think it's more of a feeling. If your house is paid for and you live there, that's a very secure, economically secure, situation. So, from personal safety to economics. "A House, a Tent, a Box": Mapping the Gaps Between Expert and Public Understanding of Healthy Housing 17

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