Structures of private rental housing provision in Australia and their consequences for housing policy

Housing policy in Australia, at both the national and State level, is heavily reliant on the private rental sector to provide housing for low-income consumers. At the same time, there is evidence of significant market failure in the rental sector concerning access to and the supply of lower cost housing. Under a structures of housing provision framework, the institutional and structural processes of how rental housing is produced, exchanged and consumed in Brisbane are analysed and shown to contribute to phenomena at the low cost end of the private rental market. This paper argues that the social relations of private rental housing provision have contributed to problems of supplying low cost private rental housing. Assumptions about the capacity of the private rental sector, and current housing policy approaches which see a greater role for the private rental sector in the provision of lower cost housing, need to be questioned and revised.