Housing vulnerability among older adults under the climate crisis: Phenomenological insights from a high-cost urban context

Abstract

This study examines climate-related housing vulnerability among housing-insecure older adults in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, one of South Korea’s most affluent urban districts. Drawing on in-depth interviews and a theoretically informed phenomenological approach, it explores how older adults experience heatwaves, cold spells, and heavy rainfall through the intersecting conditions of unsafe housing, limited mobility, social isolation, and constrained access to welfare support. The findings show that climate-related disasters were not experienced as temporary environmental disruptions, but as persistent threats to survival, dignity, health, and everyday stability. Poor insulation, inadequate ventilation, high energy costs, and fragmented institutional support intensified both physical and psychological distress, shifting the burden of adaptation onto individuals. The study identifies four interrelated experiential structures: embodied exposure to climate extremes, housing as a mediator of vulnerability, constrained navigation of welfare and support systems, and the structural meaning of climate vulnerability in a high-cost urban context. By revealing how severe vulnerability can remain hidden within affluent urban environments, this study contributes to social work and social welfare scholarship on ageing, housing insecurity, welfare accessibility, and climate justice. It argues that climate adaptation for older adults must be integrated with housing welfare, outreach-based community care, and accessible social work practice.