Performing the ‘good tenant’

Abstract

Renters in homeowner societies like Australia, the United States and United Kingdom occupy a complex moral landscape, maligned for failure to achieve homeownership but pivotal to the value of investment properties. Identification of ‘good’ and ‘risky’ tenants is an important landlord practice. We investigate how tenants conceptualise and perform the ‘good tenant’ through research with 36 single older women renting in greater Sydney, Australia: a cohort on the margins of secure housing. The good tenant demonstrates responsibility through paying rent on time and property stewardship (reporting repairs, making home). However, these practices are made necessary and risky through limited tenure security. The emotional and financial risks attending performances of the good tenant drive paradoxical relations; a good tenant is also acquiescent and silent, not reporting property repairs or lapsed leases to avoid rent increases and/or evictions. Variegated performances of the ‘good tenant’ reflect cultural property norms and valorize the investment function of housing yet could also productively unsettle tenant-landlord relations.

Keywords:

• Renting
• housing
• home
• responsibility
• risk
• Australia

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the women who shared their stories of housing, home and care for this research. We hope that I have done justice to your experiences of housing and that this work might contribute in a small way to generating further conversation around the needs for housing reform. Any misinterpretations are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Newstart was renamed ‘JobSeeker Payment’ on March 20 2020.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Emma R. Power

Emma R. Power is an urban geographer thinking about housing, home and the caring city. She is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and Institute Fellow in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University.

Charles Gillon

Charles Gillon is an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong. His research examines cultural geographies of home and their influence on housing outcomes. His PhD took a case study approach to interrogate how cultures of homemaking, nature, and finance translated into lived experiences of housing and new types of housing places in coastal Australia. He currently works at Astrolabe Group, a change management consultancy in Sydney.