Sharing risk in shared housing: rental regulations and housing justice in Australia

Abstract

Shared housing in the private rental sector (PRS), where people rent with non-family, is becoming more significant across many countries. However, from a housing justice lens, it is unclear whether housing policies and regulations based on normative understandings of households are equipped to effectively support shared housing renters. Through a case study of Australia, which operates on a ‘consumer protection’ model of rental regulation, we ask how current Australian rental regulations enable or restrict housing justice for people in shared housing in the PRS. We conduct a critical discourse analysis of consumer-oriented tenancy information published by Australian state governments and identify explicit or implicit risks in the text that may be experienced by shared housing renters. Results indicate that risks in relation to finance, eviction, and disputes are variously not acknowledged within the text or responded to with warning, guidance, or stated inability to help. We argue that the unfair distribution of risk in shared households, coupled with the severity of the consequences, constitutes a form of housing injustice. We suggest how the consumer protection framework of rental regulation could be amended to advance housing justice and assist shared housing renters.

KEYWORDS: :

• Shared housing
• private rental sector
• housing justice
• rental regulations
• housing policy

Introduction

Shared housing in the private rental sector (PRS) is a growing form of housing in many countries (Druta et al., 2021). Shared housing—defined here as living with non-family—can range from a comfortable and enjoyable way to live with friends (Heath & Kenyon, 2001; McNamara & Connell, 2007) to a poor-quality housing form for those with limited options (Nasreen & Ruming, 2021; Ortega-Alcázar & Wilkinson, 2021). Research in multiple countries has found there can be many problems for people living in shared housing in the PRS, including crowding, lack of privacy, poor-quality dwellings, and insecure tenure (e.g., Blanc & Scanlon, 2022; Harten, 2021; Nasreen & Ruming, 2019). These problems can be viewed as issues of housing injustice, consistent with existing scholarship that positions quality housing as a human right and an issue of justice (see e.g., Madden & Marcuse, 2016; Roy & Rolnik, 2020).

Housing policy can shape outcomes for people in shared housing, for better or worse (e.g., Gurran et al., 2021; Ortega-Alcázar & Wilkinson, 2021). However, a review of literature by Goodall et al. (2023) found that shared housing is often not represented well within housing policy systems. Although many components of housing policy shape the prevalence and experience of shared housing in the PRS—for example, zoning laws, incentives for investors—we focus here on rental regulation. Rental regulations usually cover leases, bonds, and tenants’ and landlords’ rights. However, ‘the tenants’ are often assumed to be a family, and some researchers have recommended changing rental regulation to better suit shared housing (Bricocoli & Sabatinelli, 2016; Nasreen & Ruming, 2019). Research suggests that shared housing may present additional or alternative challenges compared to renting in other housing occupancy arrangements (Harten, 2021; Nasreen & Ruming, 2021; Ortega-Alcázar & Wilkinson, 2021). There is also potential for unpredictability and lack of unity in non-familial households (Raynor & Frichot, 2023). Rental regulations therefore may not be equipped to accommodate the non-normative arrangement of shared housing, which may contribute to shared housing tenants’ problems.

Reflecting on these established challenges with shared housing, and the potential impact of rental regulations in shaping these, this paper explores how shared housing is featured in rental regulations and the implications for shared housing renters. We explore this through a housing justice lens, within the case study of Australia, using critical discourse analysis. Rental regulation in Australia operates on a ‘consumer protection’ model where tenants are treated as consumers (Bradbrook, 2003), and in recent years the regulations have evolved to incrementally provide more rights and protections to tenants (see Martin et al., 2022, for an overview). We examine how this model accommodates the ‘consumers’ within shared housing. Shared housing is not regulated separately from other household arrangements in the Australian PRS. The legal status of shared renters—in relation to each other and to their landlord—is shaped by whether residents are co-tenants (all parties are on the lease) or sub-tenants (one or more tenants are subletting from a ‘head’ tenant, who generally has the responsibilities of a landlord towards the sub-tenants, such as collecting rent and lodging a bond). We specifically examine translations of rental regulation published online by Australian state governments, which aim to inform tenants of their rights and responsibilities.¹

Our research question asks how current Australian rental regulations enable or restrict housing justice for people living in shared housing in the PRS. Understanding housing justice for this group is important given the growing significance of the shared housing sector and the relative lack of knowledge about its place in the housing system. First, to contextualise our analysis, we provide background on (a) Australian shared housing, private rental regulation, and its consumer focus, and (b) housing justice and risk. Second, we discuss the utility of critical discourse analysis and our methodology. We then present our findings. Finally, we discuss the implications of the results for shared housing renters and recommend changes that could be made to the regulations, pushing for housing justice within a consumer protection framework. The paper’s theoretical contribution is in applying a housing justice lens to a specific household type and regulatory framework. While the policy settings discussed here are specific to Australia, the paper adds to the growing body of international work on shared housing in the PRS.

Background

Shared housing, PRS regulation, and consumer protection in Australia

Australia is a liberal economy country with historically high homeownership that is projected to decline in future decades (Burke et al., 2020). It is also a country where shared housing in the PRS is becoming increasingly significant in response to housing unaffordability (Maalsen, 2019; Zhang & Gurran, 2021). Shared housing in Australia (often called ‘share housing’) usually consists of two or more people renting a house or apartment that was constructed for family households (see e.g., Maalsen, 2019; McNamara & Connell, 2007), unlike some countries where shared housing commonly occurs in purpose-built and institutional dwellings (see e.g., Ronald et al., 2023). While it is difficult to discern the demographics of ‘typical’ shared housing renters in Australia, Raynor and Panza (2021, p. 1) state that people living in shared housing in Australia are ‘more likely to be young, insecurely employed, on low incomes, recent migrants, living in informal and overcrowded conditions and at a higher risk of homelessness than the general population’. It has been established that many shared housing renters are international university students on temporary visas (Nasreen & Ruming, 2021; Parkinson et al., 2021). However, recent data from Australia’s largest shared housing advertisement website shows an increase in users aged 55 and over (Walker, 2023), suggesting shared housing is being occupied by diverse age groups.

Shared housing is inherently relational as its members are affected by their interactions with each other (see Nethercote, 2019; Roseneil & Ketokivi, 2015). This research therefore heeds Nethercote’s (2019, p. 144) call for a relational perspective on the household, exploring complexity and differentiation within the household rather than assuming that households are ‘fairly unproblematic or “taken for granted” units of analysis’. The role of relationality in family households—and the way they are governed—should also be examined, but we argue that shared housing is distinct; even if residents have independent finances and live separate lives, they must manage shared legal, economic, and spatial relationships (Heath et al., 2018). Raynor and Frichot (2023, p. 1879) raise a similar point in their Australian study of shared housing during a COVID-19 lockdown, that ‘while housing and social policy and cultural expectations generally treat households as a single unit, characterised by relationships of reciprocity, this is often not the case in share houses’. We contend that relationality should be acknowledged by policies affecting people in shared housing, including, as focused on here, rental regulation.

In Australian housing policy, responsibilities are divided between the federal government, eight state/territory governments, and local governments. The PRS is primarily regulated by state/territory governments and the key forms of legislation are the Residential Tenancies Acts (RTAs), implemented in each jurisdiction by the state or territory government. RTAs set out the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords per jurisdiction. Across Australia, the RTAs cover topics including lease duration and termination, property conditions, and security deposits. There are significant and complex differences between the RTAs (see Martin et al., 2022), however, in comparison to many European countries, Australia generally provides less security to renters (see Hulse et al., 2011). In recent years, a series of reforms has gradually made the RTAs more tenant-friendly; there have been provisions to allow tenants to have pets (Stone et al., 2021), create minimum standards of property conditions, minimise no-grounds eviction, and allow tenants to make minor modifications to the property (Stone et al., 2022). However, such reforms are often controversial and sometimes opposed by property industry representatives (Martin et al., 2022). These changes are aimed at all renters, rather than specific household types, and so shared housing is generally not singled out for reform.

RTAs are a relatively recent intervention, implemented first in South Australia in 1978, then introduced in the other jurisdictions throughout the 1980s and 1990s. They originated from Poverty and the Residential Landlord-Tenant Relationship (Bradbrook, 1975), which was one of many reports resulting from the 1972 Commonwealth Commission of Inquiry into Poverty. Prior to this time, renting in Australia was governed by the common law of leases, and the Inquiry, ‘represented the first time in Australia that the suggestion was made that there was a need for a separate body of laws governing leases of residential premises’ (Bradbrook, 2003, p. 4). However, while RTAs were introduced in response to concerns about poverty, there is also a notable market focus in that they were conceptualised as consumer rights legislation (Morris et al., 2021, p. 26). Indeed, Bradbrook (2003, p. 1), who authored the 1975 report, states that ‘tenants are consumers (in the sense that they consume space and services)‘. While renters have consumer rights, owners have property rights, positioning housing (and home) as different for these two groups. All jurisdictions have either a civil tribunal or court to hear rental disputes. Tenants, however, may be afraid to complain about their landlord if worried about their tenure security or their ability to find other housing (Byrne & McArdle, 2022; Morris et al., 2021).

Housing (in)justice, risk, and shared housing

‘Housing justice’ is an expansive, values-based concept that prioritises the right to a secure home, deprioritises the right to profit from housing, and opposes financialisation (see e.g., Dawkins, 2021; Roy & Rolnik, 2020). Housing justice research has explored issues including social housing redevelopment, eviction, and gentrification, with a focus on activist movements against these (see e.g., Ferreri, 2020; Lima, 2021; Lira & March, 2023). However, housing justice has not yet been explored in relation to a specific housing occupancy arrangement such as shared housing. Housing justice can also be used conceptually to evaluate the fairness of policies and their material effects (Dawkins, 2021; Kimhur, 2024). By situating housing justice as an ideal state, policies can be measured for how they encourage fair housing and discourage poor outcomes for residents (Kimhur, 2024). However, articulating indicators of housing (in)justice can be difficult, as it requires making value judgments about what constitutes good and fair housing (see Fitzpatrick & Watts, 2018).

In this paper, we highlight one potential avenue for evaluating housing justice by focusing on risks, which can be understood as a chance of experiencing negative consequences. A focus on risk emerged inductively from our data—online translations of rental regulation—and also corresponds to previous Australian research, which has identified problems experienced by shared housing renters. Research has identified financial difficulties compared to other household occupancy arrangements (Hulse et al., 2019; Parkinson et al., 2019); exploitative arrangements with precarious tenure security, particularly if tenants are temporary migrants (Morris et al., 2023; Parkinson et al., 2021); and vulnerability to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (Raynor & Frichot, 2023; Raynor & Panza, 2021).

Focusing on ‘risk’ usefully highlights areas of vulnerability for tenants as well as issues where housing policy may not be providing adequate protection. These concerns are central to discussions of justice and what a fair housing system should provide. This focus on risk differs from that explored by Beck’s (1986/1992) work on the ‘risk society’, which concerns global risks. Rather, this paper is concerned with personal and household-level risks, connecting with previous research exploring housing-related risk for different groups (e.g., Morris et al., 2023; Power & Gillon, 2022; Stone et al., 2015; Stonehouse et al., 2015). Existing scholarship indicates that housing-related risks can be either unanticipated or predictable (see e.g., Ghasri et al., 2022). Although the context of Beck’s work is different, his explanation of risks as ‘something to do with anticipation, with destruction that has not yet happened but is threatening’ (Beck, 1986/1992, p. 33) is still pertinent. For shared housing, there are questions about how risk should be distributed among household members, what risks are ‘reasonable’, and whether tenants should risk the consequences of other tenants’ behaviours. Our focus on risks includes identifying explicit discussion of risks within the data, as well as identifying potential risks that are not explicitly framed as such.

Method

Materials and critical discourse analysis

This paper analyses consumer-oriented information that is based on Australian rental regulation. Our focus on consumer-oriented information is because, although the RTAs are available online, they are written in technical, legal language. The government webpages providing information about renting, however, are authored with the expectation they will be read by tenants for guidance. The regulatory bodies of each state and territory play active roles in implementing and communicating rental regulations. The webpages draw their content from the RTAs and often contain links to the relevant RTA as further information. As such, they are essentially a ‘translation’ of the RTA into plain language aimed specifically at the consumer. However, it must be noted that this ‘plain’ language may not be easily comprehended by tenants with low levels of English proficiency, as may be the case for recently-arrived migrants. Investigating these translations, rather than the RTAs, allows for analysis of both the substance of the legislation and the language used to communicate with an imagined tenant reader. The ‘translation’, although distinct from the legislation, is a conduit of the regulation, indicative of the logic of those who create the legislation.

Webpages were identified through targeted internet searches in each of the six states and two territories of Australia, following a similar process to Ferguson et al’.s (2021) examination of online government health information written for the public. Only webpages from government were sought, rather than non-government resources (e.g., tenants’ unions), to focus on government communications. We used the search terms ‘co tenancy’ and ‘subletting’, plus the name of each jurisdiction, as these are the two regulatory arrangements likely to structure a shared household (pilot searches using ‘share housing’ led to results about government shared-equity schemes). Co-tenancy and subletting are not unique to shared housing, as such arrangements could be applied to any adult household: a couple may rent as co-tenants, for example.

Table 1 shows the documents found from each jurisdiction. 15 documents were initially found and analysed.

Table 1. Results from each jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction	Document title(s) and word counts of main text
Australian Capital Territory (ACT)	‘Co-tenancies’ (ACAT, 2022): 773 words ‘Co-tenancy information’ (ACT Revenue Office, 2022): 373 words ‘Renting and occupancy laws’ (Justice and Community Safety Directorate, 2022): 1183 words
New South Wales (NSW)	‘Sharing a rented home’ (Fair Trading NSW, 2022): 450 words
Northern Territory (NT)	‘Share houses’ (Northern Territory Government, 2016): 483 words ‘Sub-letting’ (Northern Territory Consumer Affairs, 2019): 138 words
Queensland	‘Share homes and co-tenancies’ (Residential Tenancies Authority, 2022a): 253 words ‘Sub-letting’ (Residential Tenancies Authority, 2022b): 329 words
South Australia (SA)	‘Sharing a private rental property’ (Government of South Australia, 2018): 574 words ‘Subletting or assigning a lease’ (Government of South Australia, 2021): 365 words
Tasmania	‘Share houses, co-tenants and sub-letting’ (Consumer, Building and Occupational Services, 2022): 276 words
Victoria	‘Co-renting (renting with other people)’ (Consumer Affairs Victoria, 2022): 522 words ‘Sub-letting’ (Consumer Affairs Victoria, 2021): 623 words
Western Australia (WA)	‘Co-tenancy (renting with other people)’ (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, 2022): 794 words ‘Renting a home in Western Australia: A tenant’s guide’ (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, n.d.): 42-page PDF booklet

We examine the documents using critical discourse analysis, which has been previously employed in housing and urban research (Jacobs, 2006; Marston, 2002; Stonehouse et al., 2015; White & Nandedkar, 2021). As Clapham (2019, p. 17) contends, ‘Discourse is at the heart of policy because it frames problems and the means through which actors interact’.

Rather than approaching housing policy as objective, discourse analysis applies social constructionist thinking to examine policy ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ as subjective and contingent (Marston, 2002). Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is focused on political and social issues rather than only language (Marston, 2002, p. 85). As Fairclough (2013, p. 8) states, ‘A primary focus of CDA is on the effect of power relations and inequalities in producing social wrongs, and in particular on discursive aspects of power relations and inequalities’. Fairclough’s work is associated with a political economy and Marxist approach to discourse analysis within urban policy research (Lees, 2004), and Jacobs (2006, p. 45) suggests this approach is best suited to researchers examining ‘the recursive relationship between language and power’. This paper is particularly concerned with how language may highlight and reinforce the reduced power of renters. As such, CDA is an ideal tool to examine how Australian rental regulations enable or restrict housing justice for shared housing renters.

Process

The webpages were downloaded and imported into qualitative analysis software NVivo. Analysis followed Fairclough’s (2013) methodology for analysing a ‘social wrong’, considering issues such as the disadvantages of private renting in Australia (e.g., Bate, 2021; Power & Gillon, 2022) and previous research on shared housing. Notes were made about each document’s key thematic and linguistic elements (e.g., word choice, tone). The coding of downloaded documents followed an inductive process. During initial reading of the first few documents, we identified what could be construed as risks to shared housing tenants—where tenants could face negative consequences that were severe and/or due to actions that were not their fault. This theme of ‘risk’ became the coding frame, which was refined across reading the various documents. This coheres with the focus on housing justice, as discussed above.

We coded risks that were explicitly marked as such—for example, where documents discussed potential consequences that could befall renters—as well as issues that we interpreted as risk-inducing but were not marked as such. We also coded how these various forms of risk were communicated to tenants and how the risks were recognised within the texts. The next section discusses the identified risks and how they are recognised, to draw out the housing justice implications for shared housing renters.

Results

Some jurisdictions provided a greater quantity of content to analyse compared to others. From our search results, some jurisdictions provided very little information, such as NSW (450 words) and Tasmania (276 words). The ACT provided the most information, with the initial result page ‘Co-tenancy information’ containing less than 400 words but having links to other pages that were very detailed about specific elements of co-tenancy, for example the five-page factsheet ‘Bond and condition reports in co-tenancies’ (ACT Government, 2021a), which proved useful to this analysis.

The three forms of risk we categorised were eviction, financial, and dispute. We also categorised four types of recognition. Some risks were not acknowledged. This is where we identified a risk implicit in the text, but it was not recognised by the text. Some risks were addressed with a warning. Here, the risk to tenants was clearly presented but given as a warning for what could happen, with no means of mitigating the risk. Some risks were recognised with guidance for how to address the risk. It is important to note that guidance does not transfer risk away from the tenant, but only suggests individual actions tenants can take to reduce their risk. Finally, some risks were recognised but the documents expressly stated there would be no help. In subsequent sections, we present some key examples of how the three forms of risk intersected with these four types of recognition.

Financial risks

Financial risks were classified in our analysis as those where tenants could possibly lose money through actions not directly related to their own behaviour. For example, tenants being charged for property damage done by a co-tenant. South Australia states, ‘…a landlord can claim costs from any or all of the co-tenants for things like overdue rent, cleaning or damage’ (Government of South Australia, 2018), which implies discretion on the landlord’s part as to whether one or many tenants are charged. Queensland similarly states that, ‘Co-tenants can be jointly or individually responsible for the full cost of compensation owed to the property manager/owner if the tenancy agreement is breached’ (Residential Tenancies Authority, 2022a), but does not detail how individual or joint responsibility is determined. These texts address risk with a warning to tenants. Alternatively, the financial risks of co-tenancy are recognised by WA in the form of guidance for how tenants can mitigate risk, as it uniquely advocates a risk-reduction strategy of entering into separate tenancy agreements (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, 2022). WA gives the advice that ‘Rooming arrangements are ideal for shared tenancies because they improve protections for tenants and can make it easier for lessors/agents and tenants to agree on issues such as bonds and who is responsible for damages’ (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, 2022). Rooming (also known as boarding house) arrangements may be under different tenancy regulations to shared housing, depending on the jurisdiction of Australia. This guidance makes WA the only jurisdiction to suggest that co-tenancy does not provide adequate protection.

Another example of financial risk entails tenants not receiving their bond (security deposit) efficiently or not receiving their complete portion. In Victoria, co-tenants depend on each other to get their full bond back, as the bond authority ‘will only release the bond if all the renters on the agreement can provide their signatures’ (Consumer Affairs Victoria, 2022). This is another example of what we categorise as warning, as tenants are informed of their responsibilities but not given advice on how to address the risk of some renters not providing a signature. Several jurisdictions address the complex process of navigating a bond when one or more tenants leave and others stay. Transferring bond is a potentially risk-inducing process where an incoming tenant privately transfers a large amount of money to an outgoing tenant (who they may not know), directly or via a remaining tenant. For example, the NSW document simply states, ‘Co-tenants can pass bond money between themselves’ (Fair Trading NSW, 2022) and the Queensland document says co-tenants who leave ‘will need to get their share of the bond from the tenant moving in, or those remaining’ (Residential Tenancies Authority, 2022a). Passing large sums of money between individuals raises risks, but this is not acknowledged in the texts. The ACT differs in that it provides a detailed and complex example of bond transfer in a shared house, which begins: ‘Jonah is moving out and Azima is moving in. How do they manage the bond?’ (ACT Government, 2021a). The text goes on to provide guidance through its detailed instructions to tenants.

Eviction risks

Eviction risks were where we identified the risk of tenancy termination due to behaviour of another tenant. Victoria gives an example where, ‘If your housemate is late paying their share of the rent for a few months, both of you will be “in arrears,” and could be told to leave the apartment, even though you have been paying your share on time’ (Consumer Affairs Victoria, 2022). In SA, similar language is used: ‘If the landlord doesn’t receive all the rent due because a co-tenant doesn’t pay their share, all co-tenants would be breaching the agreement’ (Government of South Australia, 2018). These texts address risk with a warning: the stated cause-and-effect, where all co-tenants are affected by the actions of one, does not acknowledge that tenants could be evicted through no legal fault of their own. Instead, the tone is neutral and informational, as though the government is not responsible for this rule. There is no advice for tenants who are evicted because of a co-tenant’s behaviour. WA uses similar language of warning to inform readers that a co-tenant’s behaviour ‘could compromise your tenancy at the property too’. Many of the eviction and financial risks identified—especially pertaining to shared liability for damage—are recognised in this way.

Information on subletting generally states that head-tenants must get the landlord’s permission before a sub-tenant moves in, and it is often the sub-tenant who risks eviction if an illegal subletting arrangement is discovered. In the NT, ‘you and/or the sub-tenants may be asked to leave’ (Northern Territory Consumer Affairs, 2019), so the sub-tenant also carries risk if they stay without permission. In Victoria, the landlord ‘can ask any of the people living at the property to leave within 14 days’ (Consumer Affairs Victoria, 2021) if they discover an unauthorised subletting arrangement. These texts again recognise the risk through warning. These texts also highlight the power imbalance between tenants and landlords, and the even lesser power of sub-tenants in relation to the head-tenant and the landlord; the sub-tenant could presumably be evicted even if they were under the impression the landlord had approved the arrangement.

Dispute risks

Dispute risks constitute the risk of co-resident disagreements (e.g., about property damage, unwanted behaviour) and their consequences. The resources available to address co-tenant disputes vary by jurisdiction. In the ACT, disputing co-tenants can apply to the civil tribunal (ACAT, 2022) and are given guidance to do so. The Victorian document suggests that if co-tenants disagree, ‘they should try to work it out together’ (Consumer Affairs Victoria, 2022). The document addresses the risk with no help: ‘We [the state] cannot help with disputes between co-renters’, but the state’s dispute settlement centre ‘may be able to help’ (Consumer Affairs Victoria, 2022). Similarly, WA also provides no help by stating that they cannot assist with disputes between co-tenants because ‘they are private matters’, but they also provide guidance by suggesting arrangements about rent and maintenance are put in writing because it ‘helps avoid major disputes’ or that tenants enter into separate tenancy arrangements to ‘avoid common complications’ (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, 2022). Unlike in the ACT, in these jurisdictions, conflict between co-tenants is relegated to a private affair. The implications are that disputes will be minor and tenants can ‘work it out together’. The possibilities of power imbalances or harmful conflict between shared housing tenants are overlooked.

However, in Victoria, disputes between head-tenants and sub-tenants can be referred to Consumer Affairs or the civil tribunal, which frames subletting as more relationally complex than co-tenancy (Consumer Affairs Victoria, 2021). Conversely, Tasmania says that the RTA does not apply to sub-tenants and provides no help, saying disputes between head-tenants and sub-tenants ‘need to be sorted out between the parties’ (Consumer, Building and Occupational Services, 2022). This positions the head/sub-tenant relationship as different from a landlord/tenant relationship and disregards the position of power that the head-tenant has over the sub-tenant. In Queensland, power differentials in subletting are also overlooked and the risk of dispute is not acknowledged, as whether occupants are classified as co- or sub-tenants is dependent on ‘what has been agreed with the head-tenant’ (Residential Tenancies Authority, 2022b).

Other jurisdictions address the risk of dispute indirectly. The NT gives advice on the relational nature of sharing: ‘You should meet the other tenants that you will be sharing with and talk about the rules the other tenants already have in place’ (Northern Territory Government, 2016). This implicitly provides guidance to shared renters to address issues before the tenancy commences, perhaps reducing the risk of future disputes. Similarly, NSW states that when transferring or assigning the lease (replacing oneself or adding a co-tenant) it is not necessary to sign a new agreement, although they provide guidance that ‘it is best to put the arrangement in writing to avoid any disputes later on’ (Fair Trading NSW, 2022). The language of ‘it is best’ suggests discretion, as opposed to the stern language at the top of the webpage of ‘obligations you need to follow’ (Fair Trading NSW, 2022). Guidance in the form of advice to put agreements in writing, to reduce financial and dispute risks, is also given by Queensland and WA (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, 2022; Residential Tenancies Authority, 2022a).

Table 2, below, plots the forms of risk and type of recognition identified in the documents of each jurisdiction. A particular jurisdiction not appearing in the table (e.g., eviction risk in Queensland) indicates a lack of conclusive data to analyse within the documents, not that these risks are absent. Some jurisdictions contained multiple ‘types of recognition’ about different aspects of tenancies.

Table 2. Jurisdictions categorised by forms of risk and types of recognition.

	Financial risk	Eviction risk	Dispute risk
Australian Capital Territory (ACT)	Guidance Warning		Guidance
New South Wales (NSW)	Not acknowledged		Guidance
Northern Territory (NT)	Guidance	Warning	Guidance
Queensland	Warning Not acknowledged		Guidance Not acknowledged No help
South Australia (SA)	Warning	Warning
Tasmania	Guidance		No help
Victoria	Warning	Warning	No help Guidance
Western Australia (WA)	Guidance Warning Not acknowledged	Warning	No help Guidance

Source: Authors, compiled from information in ACAT (2022), ACT Government (2021a), ACT Revenue Office (2022), Fair Trading NSW (2022), Northern Territory Government (2016), Northern Territory Consumer Affairs (2019), Residential Tenancies Authority (2022a, 2022b), Government of South Australia (2018, 2021), Consumer, Building and Occupational Services (2022), Consumer Affairs Victoria (2021, 2022), and Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (2022).

As the information mapped at Table 2 demonstrates, warning was a common framing for financial and eviction risk. Guidance was a common framing in several jurisdictions, in relation to financial risk and dispute risk. No help was also articulated in relation to dispute risk, and risk was not acknowledged in relation to financial and dispute risk. While these types of recognition differ, they have one similarity: none transfer risk away from the shared housing tenants. Even guidance gives tenants advice on how they might be able to reduce their personal risk, without eliminating the source of said risk.

These documents provide examples of how ‘language is deployed to legitimise action and structure the parameters of policy intervention’ (Jacobs, 2006, p. 42), as the language often drew a barrier between legitimate areas for governments to assist, and ‘private’ matters that tenants must navigate themselves. As demonstrated by the treatment of dispute risks, these barriers are drawn differently by the jurisdictions. In the next section, we discuss the implications of these results.

Discussion

Unfair housing risks for shared housing renters

Our analysis highlighted many explicit or implicit risks for shared housing renters, categorised here as eviction, financial, and dispute risks. These could yield housing-related consequences that are severe—both legal consequences and secondary consequences that could occur as a result.

Eviction risk yields legal consequences (being ordered to leave the dwelling) as well as possible secondary consequences. In an Australian study of evictions, Beer et al. (2006, p. 63) found a ‘considerable number’ of shared housing renters were evicted due to the behaviour of others: ‘arrears because of sharers’ failure to contribute or failure to pass on collected rent to the landlord; damage from others’ guests or their friends; complaints from neighbours prompted by others’ behaviour’. Being evicted damages tenants’ reputations and can impede their ability to secure future housing; at worst, eviction can lead to homelessness (Crane & Warnes, 2000) which can introduce associated trauma (Parsell, 2023). Financial risks can also lead to legal consequences (owing money) and secondary consequences. If tenants are charged for damage caused by another resident, it can mark their rental history and create difficulties securing another rental; most rental applications in Australia require a reference from the previous landlord and involve tenants being searched on databases that detail certain transgressions (see e.g., Kollmorgen, 2023). Dispute risks may not have legal consequences, but could lead to personal consequences of housemate relationships breaking down or—at worst—abuse or bullying. However, the possibility of violence, abuse, or bullying between housemates is absent from the documentation reviewed here. The documents analysed here position co-tenancy and sometimes subletting as a space devoid of power imbalances between residents, where tenants can ‘work things out together’. Most jurisdictions of Australia now have provisions protecting domestic violence victim-survivors in rental properties (see Martin et al., 2022, for overview). However, the question of whether an abusive co-tenant who is not an intimate partner—and any property damage/risks that are introduced through such abuse—qualifies as ‘domestic violence’ needs clarification.

These consequences are distinctive in that they are faced even by those who are not responsible for the problem or tenancy breach. The types of recognition identified in our results do not transfer risk away from individual tenants. Rather, the current regulations place tenants at risk for other tenants’ behaviour; risk is distributed equally across the household unit regardless of individual tenants’ actions. We suggest that these are unfair in the sense that those who have not caused any breaches may be deemed responsible for them. While risks due to others’ behaviour are not unique to shared housing, such risks may be more prominent due to potential unpredictability and fluidity in non-familial households (see Raynor & Frichot, 2023). Beck (1986/1992, p. 33) argues that risks are both ‘real and unreal’ (emphasis in original) due to the potential for disaster that may not be realised. In the case of shared housing, these risks can potentially impact tenure, financial, and emotional security. Regardless of whether the consequences are realised, we argue that the severity of the consequences and their unfair distribution renders these risks a form of housing injustice. The regulations can therefore be evaluated as constraining tenants’ housing justice through the imposition of unfair housing risks.

Consumer protection frameworks and housing justice

It has previously been contended that the consumer protection focus of the RTAs should be replaced with a focus on housing justice (Martin, 2020). Our results suggest that the current regulations constrain housing justice for shared housing tenants; however, it is worth considering if beneficial changes could be made within a consumer protection framework, through a fairer distribution of risk. Within any approach taken to improve shared housing renters’ legal position, consideration of what is just, reasonable, and fair is required. The RTAs’ focus on consumer rights and protections have been previously useful in extending tenants’ rights in several areas, such as the ability to keep pets (see Stone et al., 2022). We suggest there is not necessarily a dichotomy between consumer protection and housing justice, but rather, a consumer protection framework could be amended to promote housing justice. The path dependency (see Bengtsson & Ruonavaara, 2010) of using a consumer protection framework for rental regulation also means that any short-term changes will likely need to be made within this framework. We propose three ways that the focus on consumers could better incorporate shared housing tenants and better enable housing justice. While our analysis focused on online translations of rental regulation, our recommendations target the underlying legislation, as the online content communicates the risks embedded in the legislation.

First, jurisdictions could create tenancy regulations that specifically address shared housing arrangements. This has previously been suggested by Nasreen & Ruming (2019) in relation to NSW rental regulation and by Bricocoli & Sabatinelli (2016) in the Italian context. The one jurisdiction foregrounding shared housing is the ACT, which introduced the policies discussed in this paper to ‘clarify and modernise the legal framework for tenants living in share housing’ (ACT Government, 2021b). The ACT’s efforts to tailor rental regulation for shared housing provide a template that others could follow. To aid in this transition, there could be deliberate efforts to collect tenants’ voices on their experiences. Gathering and learning from shared housing tenants’ experiences of rental regulation could lead to more responsive regulation that targets the areas in need of reform. As a starting point, previous research on shared housing experiences in Australia (e.g., Nasreen & Ruming, 2021; Parkinson et al., 2021; Raynor & Frichot, 2023) could be examined by policymakers.

Second, shared housing renters could be situated as individual consumers, rather than part of a household unit imagined as cohesive (Nethercote, 2019). As Raynor and Frichot (2023, p. 1879) found in their study, although households are treated ‘as a single unit, characterised by relationships of reciprocity, this is often not the case in share houses’. Such a policy shift would entail sharers establishing individual tenancy arrangements, as the WA document suggests (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, 2022), to protect them from the unfair housing risks we have analysed here. If co-residents are ‘individuals’, then it may also enable more jurisdictions to allow co-resident disputes to be heard at the civil tribunal, as the ACT currently does. In the UK, it is common for shared housing renters to hold individual leases, but this often means the landlord selects the tenants, resulting in a household of strangers which can lead to safety concerns (Ortega-Alcázar & Wilkinson, 2021). If Australian shared housing tenants are treated as individuals under the RTAs, it is important that they can still choose their co-residents, to increase tenant autonomy and wellbeing.

Third, current consumer protections for victims of domestic violence in family households could be extended to shared households, for example, victims not being held liable for property damage caused through an act of domestic violence (currently legislated in three jurisdictions, see Martin et al., 2022, p. 78). Studies from the UK have found bullying and unsafe behaviour in shared housing (Ortega-Alcázar & Wilkinson, 2021; Wilkinson & Ortega-Alcázar, 2019). Such protections could be incorporated into all regulations around co-tenancy and subletting, especially given the inherent power imbalance between head tenants and sub-tenants. These protections would help tenants who are being victimised by their co-residents, as well as tenants sharing with a family where domestic violence is taking place.

As discussed earlier, we argue that a relational perspective is needed when considering shared households, due to the complex interconnections between residents, which are incompatible with the notion of the household as a static unit (Nethercote, 2019; Raynor & Frichot, 2023). Recognising shared housing tenants are individuals as well as part of a household could enable housing justice by ensuring they do not face unfair housing risks. These three suggestions offer a starting point for a relational approach to the regulation of shared housing.

Conclusion

This analysis found that rental regulations in Australia can restrict housing justice for shared housing tenants. Financial, eviction, and dispute-related risks are often recognised, but tenants are either warned, given advice to personally mitigate risk, or told there is no help. We conceptualise these issues as unfair housing risks, a form of housing injustice that impacts tenants’ tenure, financial, and emotional security. Shared housing tenants are bound together through administrative and economic ties, but the implications of this, and how the risks may differ from a family household, are not addressed comprehensively. The consumer protection framework of rental regulation still has utility, and we contend that housing justice can be advanced within this paradigm. Australia is at a dynamic point where tenants’ rights are constantly in discussion, meaning there is a possibility to enhance housing justice through tenancy reforms. It is worth noting that changes to formal regulations would not necessarily help those in informal shared housing, including informal subletting. A different approach would be required to consider how to enhance housing justice in these situations.

Internationally, shared housing is becoming a longer-term housing solution for larger numbers of people (Druta et al., 2021), and undoubtedly this will continue in response to rising housing unaffordability. It is therefore important that shared housing renters are subject to regulations that enable, rather than constrain, housing justice. Both within Australia and internationally, increasing tenants’ rights will benefit all renters; however, the complex relationality of shared housing arrangements can slip through the cracks of PRS policies designed for ‘standard’ households. Future research could explore shared housing in a variety of countries and investigate how rental regulations accommodate this housing form.

Acknowledgements

Parts of this paper were presented at the State of Australasian Cities Conference 2023. ZG wishes to thank Professor Kay Cook and Dr Deb Batterham, associate PhD supervisors, for their helpful feedback on various drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Programme Scholarship and an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) Postgraduate Top-Up Scholarship.

Notes

1 Research suggests many shared housing arrangements in Australia are informal: not all tenants are listed on the lease or known to the landlord (Gurran et al., 2021; Parkinson et al., 2021). Acknowledging that informality is common, we maintain that rental regulation provides the blueprint for tenants’ rights, and therefore it is important to investigate how this regulation affects shared housing renters.