Worldwide, there is an urgent imperative to provide a housing supply that is environmentally sustainable as well as acceptable and desirable for its users. A holistic and integrative understanding of the relationship between households' residential preferences and dwellings is needed to achieve this goal. This paper addresses this gap by conceptualizing and operationalizing housing as a system whose human and material behaviours are determined by its function. Following a qualitative literature review to identify what housing functions are and investigate their effects on the housing system, we explore the applicability of such functions in Swiss tenants' residential mobility. Results show that multiple functions co-exist in the housing realm, each of which determines various human (i.e. residential preferences) and material (i.e. dwelling forms) behaviours that vary according to given societal and environmental structural elements (e.g. geography, culture). We also observe that housing functions potentially provide the missing link between the determinants of tenants' residential mobility.

Background: The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis and the corresponding first nationwide lockdown from mid-March to 10 May 2020 engendered considerable psychological strain among people in Switzerland. This study analyzes determinants of changes in subjective levels of psychological strain experienced during the lockdown.Methods: An online survey conducted as part of a larger mixed methods study examined the material and emotional aspects of individual reactions to the lockdown from a socio-ecological perspective. Participants (N = 5932) were asked about their personal and employment status, housing features, changes in various activities (e.g., physical activity, watching TV, social media use) and aspects of mental distress and well-being.Results: A substantial share of participants reported to feel depressed (33%) and anxious (43%) more often during the COVID-19 lockdown than before, whereas significantly (p < 0.001) less persons reported a decrease of these negative feelings (depressed 17%; anxious 14%). Women, single people, students and people who lost their jobs or were temporally unemployed due to the lockdown experienced a particularly strong increase of subjective psychological strain. Important residential factors reducing subjective psychological strain were the general comfort of the housing situation and having a private garden or multiple types of outdoor space. Considering leisure activities, the strongest positive psychological effect resulted from increased physical activities, followed by reading and cooking. However, 45% of the participants reported a decreased frequency of physical activity during the lockdown compared to before, whereas significantly less persons (26%) reported a corresponding increase (p < 0.001).Conclusion: Consistent with other studies, the results indicate a substantial reduction of subjective psychological well-being of the population during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Switzerland. The psychological burdens which the participants experienced differ depending on personal characteristics and situational factors. Negative psychological and economic consequences and gender inequalities should accordingly be carefully considered and actively prevented when designing COVID-19 measures. Supportive economic and social, cognitive and behavioral psychological interventions need to be designed and implemented to maintain the well-being of residents during lockdown.

During the first wave of COVID-19, residents' health and well-being were challenged as residential environments suddenly had to accommodate most of the functions of an urban system. Although scholars and practitioners have proposed reconsidering dwelling requirements, their top-down approach overlooks the agency of residents whose preferences might have changed during the confinement. This paper investigates the effects of the first wave of COVID-19 on residential preferences in Switzerland. Adopting a systems perspective, we use an online survey of residents (N = 5378) to explore the extent to which the functions assigned to ideal dwellings have changed during the pandemic and relate these shifts to sociodemographic characteristics, changes in leisure activities, and respondents' environment conditions. Results indicate that at least one ideal function changed in importance for 60% of the respondents. The desire for a place for self-representation increased, whereas a place for meeting basic needs evinced the largest loss in importance. Our regression models enable us to identify two profiles of residents who responded differently to residential stress. We argue that housing owners, practitioners and policy-makers should empower inhabitants to respond to current and future challenges by acting on and changing their residential environment for their health and well-being.

PurposeWith the emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the Oncologists have had to face the challenge of continuing active treatments without compromising the safety of our patients and healthcare personnel. Methods From February 24th, we reorganized our Oncology Unit with the introduction of a double-step triage strategy for cancer patients under treatment in order to identify patients at risk from COVID-19 and to avoid their admission to the outpatient clinic and to the inpatient ward.ResultsFrom February 24 to April 7 2020, we have performed 819 phone calls, leading to the authorization of 788 accesses (312 patients) to the outpatient clinic for active treatments. 26 patients (8.3%) with symptoms were kept at home and managed by repeated telephone calls; 23 of them were managed at home with symptomatic treatments and antibiotics and the others 3 were hospitalized for suspected COVID. At the second triage level, 5 patients weren’t admitted to the Outpatient clinic for persistent fever or respiratory distress.177 patients were admitted to the inpatient ward: none has been found to be COVID-19 positive and both outpatient and inpatient areas were still COVID-19 free. No healthcare workers became infected by SARS-CoV-2.ConclusionOur practical approach based on a simple double-step triage strategy, allows the identification of patients at risk for active COVID-19 infection, did not request neither human nor economic extra resources and appears effective, within a large community Hospital, in maintaining cancer care and therapy while protecting patients and healthcare workers from COVID-19 infection.