Tenant agency in Australia's public housing transfers: a comparative assessment

Chronically starved of resources, Australia's public housing is trapped in a spiral of decline. State governments have been increasingly looking to large-scale transfers to not-for-profit housing providers as a possible salvation. Focusing on the relatively small-scale largely experimental programmes enacted to date, and using the UK council housing transfer experience as a comparative context, this paper analyses the nature and extent of tenant voice and choice in such initiatives. Mainly based on interviews with social landlord staff and tenants involved in recent transfer programmes, it is found that resident input to decision-making has been generally very limited. At least among social landlord staff, a consensus view has emerged that the ‘individual choice’ model so far utilised would be untenable within the context of larger scale programmes. The paper weighs up the feasibility of a ‘collective choice’ approach akin to that used in the UK and assesses the thinking underpinning the ‘mandated transfer’ model which appears more likely to predominate in the future. It also connects policy-maker thinking on tenant rights to a meaningful say on transfers with the increasingly dominant Australian orthodoxy that social housing should form ‘a pathway and not a destination’ and that, in line with this, tenancies should be granted on a fixed term rather than open-ended basis.