In Australia, social housing and other forms of social support have been eroded severely since the 1990s. Since then, there has not been any significant new supply of social housing in all eight states and territories until after the COVID-19 pandemic, when most jurisdictions have announced new social housing construction. However, this is yet to develop into a long-term commitment to address the severe shortage of social housing.
This erosion of the social safety net has long been linked to the influence of neoliberalism on policy and practice. More recently, discourse around care has emerged as an alternative way of thinking and acting on social support. In this article, we use data collected from qualitative in-depth interviews with social housing providers and tenants in four Australian states—New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania—to explore the operation of an ethics of care in social housing.
We adopt Power and Mee’s understanding of care as a relational activity and moral practice involving reaching out to others. Our findings suggest that the infrastructure of care in social housing in the four Australian states fails to provide care for the tenants who live there. This can only be amended with structural changes to the social housing system itself.
