Shaky Foundations: Moving Beyond “Housing Tenure”

Housing tenure retains a “taken for granted” status in much writing on housing, despite some previous critical analysis. This article reviews theoretical perspectives on housing tenure, and re‐examines the construction of housing tenure in Australia as it relates to changing land tenure arrangements and institutional settings which affect housing occupancy. It asserts that the construction of housing tenure as a series of unchanging and mutually exclusive categories, centred on “usual residence”, creates a barrier to understanding changes in how households occupy and buy/sell housing, using the examples of increased investment in residential property and a proliferation of market housing arrangements for older people. A suggested way forward is to distinguish questions about housing occupancy, which affect the daily life and circumstances of households, from questions relating to investment in residential property as an asset and potential generator of capital and income for households, particularly as they become older.