Sustaining tenancies by ‘caring-with’: Care ethics in social housing tenancy management

Abstract

This article contributes to scholarship that conceptualises housing, particularly social housing, as an infrastructure of care. Care for
people with housing needs that cannot be met in the private market is shaped through the provision of social housing, and social housing can also be a site for caring (and careless) practices and relations.

Using qualitative data gathered in interviews with tenancy managers at one of the largest social housing providers in Victoria, I argue that tenancy management must be understood as an integral pillar of the caring infrastructure social housing can provide. Tenancy managers who participated in this study understood tenancy management in social housing as a caring practice. They described their role as oriented around sustaining the tenancies of people with high and complex support needs who would otherwise be at high risk of homelessness.

However, tenancy managers also faced consistent barriers to the enactment of tenancy-sustainment-as-care, which emerged when caring relationships between the actors involved in sustaining a tenancy broke down. This paper focuses on their experiences of overcoming barriers, resolving conflicts, and successfully sustaining tenancies. The analysis shows that ‘caring-with’ – i.e., working relationally to build collaborative networks of care-givers and care-receivers – can support tenancy sustainment.