Transitional housing: an update on sustainability challenges and research opportunities

Awareness and increasing concern about the many homeless victims of the many natural disasters the world is currently witnessing is pushing forward questions on disaster relief and temporary housing practice. Consequently, despite it being a relatively recent subject of study, research on transitional shelters is gaining momentum and the volume of publications on the matter is rapidly expanding. By means of a thematic analysis, this study seeks to organise some of the highly heterogeneous research material on temporary housing, produced by the scientific community to date. Ultimately, this paper presents its classification into themes and subthemes and shows patterns in the literature, including examples, as a base for the identification of research gaps, open questions, challenges and new fronts in the area.