Milieuongelijkheden: een onderzoek naar de woonomstandigheden in Wallonië

This article has two aims. Firstly, to introduce the important environmental inequality scholarship, mostly imported from the USA, in the Belgian context, where few studies have been carried out to date on this topic. Secondly, to propose an unconventional approach to environmental inequality scholarship by focusing on housing conditions as substantial environmental inequalities. On this latter premise, we based this study on the CEHD housing quality survey carried out in 2012 and 2013 in Wallonia, to test several hypotheses as regards the relationships between housing quality, poverty, and spatial differentiation – discrepancies among population and space. The results confirm most of our research hypotheses, showing important inequalities in terms of housing conditions between wealthy and poor populations, as well as between urban areas, on the one hand, and suburban and rural areas, on the other. Our findings call for new avenues and priorities for housing policies in Wallonia, and for further research on housing quality as environmental inequality: with a focus on a specific target public – single households, and on subjective perception of environmental nuisances in and surrounding home.