Housing Inequality: a conceptual model for understanding and influencing social outcomes, residential dwelling, and advantage in Australia.
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(This thesis is currently unavailable due to copyright.)
Date
2025
Authors
James, Laura
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Advisors
Baker, Emma
Daniel, Lyrian (University of South Australia)
Bentley, Rebecca (University of Melbourne)
Daniel, Lyrian (University of South Australia)
Bentley, Rebecca (University of Melbourne)
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Abstract
Housing inequality does not affect people evenly. In Australian cities, and other ‘home ownership societies’ in Europe, North America, and New Zealand, housing inequality is better overcome by people who own property, in terms of status, power, and resources. This causes unnecessary disadvantage, poor social outcomes, and harsh dwelling experiences for people who rent (or otherwise do not own housing), with private rental tenants being particularly disadvantaged in Australia and abroad too. Research to date has predominantly focused on economic explanations of housing inequality. Economic change and unevenness have been outlined on predominantly financial terms, and the tensions and contradictions that underlie housing dimensions have been analysed as macro level and large scale phenomena, and as befits an economic regime structure of the ‘welfare’ state. While some scholars have suggested that housing inequality cannot be solely understood through macro or economic analyses, little is known about the social influences on housing inequality as small scale and multilevel, much less why housing inequality occurs, or how we can improve dwelling, social outcomes, and advantage for the most vulnerable, in need, and at-risk people among us. In all, while we know that housing has influence – for example, as the primary social determinant – we don’t know how housing works or is operationalised, or what the mechanisms of change are. To address this gap, this thesis examines a broad range of likely and potential influences on housing inequality. First, a systematic review (paper one, chapter three) on the uses and definitions of housing inequality identified a great breadth of overlapping factors. While economic and financial factors were frequently cited, the breadth and overlap found in the review indicated that housing inequality was not solely or alone an economic issue. From the systematic review, a conceptual model of housing inequality was developed. It showed that housing inequality reflected the multiple roles and expressions of housing as: (i) an outcome of a market society, (ii) experienced unevenly across population groups, (iii) a societal cultural construct, and (iv) a product (often unintentional) of policy. The conceptual insights of this model included that housing has multiple roles and impacts, and thus housing inequality is intersectional across multiple risk and advantage/disadvantage exposures. These were then applied to empirically test two conceptual lenses – housing niches (paper two, chapter four), and the social role (paper three, chapter five) – using survey data on housing conditions in Australia as an exemplifying case study. Housing niches modelling (see seminal work, Baker & Lester 2017; Saegert & Evans 2003) was used to analyse survey data of rental housing conditions in Australia (the Australian Rental Housing Conditions Dataset, Baker et al. 2022). It demonstrated that household risk is cumulative, and that housing has impact across multiple factors of urban advantage/disadvantage. It suggested a relational framing of housing inequality in terms of the housing and urban environment, and the role of housing in residential, dwelling experience. The paper discussed housing inequality in regard to societal attributes and personal characteristics in people’s housing bundles, and it linked the relationship between cumulative household risk and urban advantage/disadvantage. The social role (Loudfoot 1972: 136; Sunstein 1996: 911; Tuomela 1984: 6) examination encapsulated across the multiple roles of housing. It discussed how housing ‘acts’ upon us to (i) rearrange all social contracts, (ii) as a primary means of advantage, and (iii) a small scale and bundled experience. As a conceptual lens for research and policy insights, the social role was empirically tested using analysis of experiential survey data on rental and ownership tenure (the Australian Housing Conditions Dataset, Baker et al. 2023). It described how housing impacts through social structures and across urban participations. And it showed housing roles and responsibilities in multiple policy portfolios, thereby reiterating the importance of a local base for integrated and comprehensive regovernance of many housing solutions and ‘whole of system’ reform. Papers two and three differentiated between types of housing tenure for better dwelling and social outcomes. This integrated approach highlighted the pitfalls of relying on one dominant private ownership form, and the use of commodified consumption for residential and dwelling outcomes. Under piecemeal policy and assumptions of housing singularity, people who predominantly benefitted from property ownership were outright owners, and investor-landlords, in particular. This links with the preferential tax treatment of property ownership (and owners) in Australia, and our largely unregulated rental housing market and dwelling conditions by the Federal government. While people in ownership tenure were overall, more advantaged, owners who did not own outright (i.e. who had mortgage debt), were less advantaged. The findings of this thesis highlight the importance of social relations in housing (i.e. direct communication, exchange, power, dominance, influence) that impact across dwelling and urban participation. Given that public and private distributions of finance are very different (as supported by emerging inequality research internationally, Piketty 2014; Stiglitz 2012, 2024; and in Australia, Adkins et al. 2020; Berry 1977a), and in general, have shaped housing and advantage unevenly across people and social groups, this thesis argues for housing policy imperatives of cumulative household risk. Researchers interested in impacting systemic housing reform face a particular challenge in how to govern broadly, given the very different experiences of housing in increasingly unequal societies. A focus on housing in social institutions, and what housing, governments, and polycentric governance could do, is how we can house more people, better, and thus, where our urban promised lands lie.
School/Discipline
School of Social Sciences : Australian Centre for Housing Research
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences : Australian Centre for Housing Research, 2025
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This thesis is currently unavailable due to copyright.