Mobility in the public rental market

Abstract

Why do people move house? Are some households more likely to move than others? Where do they ultimately reside? The dynamic process of residential mobility has been much studied by social scientists. Research has focussed, however, on households moving within the private sector tenures of owner occupancy and rental---accounting for some 95 per cent of all households in Australia---and has paid little attention to public renters. One reason for this oversight is that low income public tenants are perceived as a relatively immobile group and therefore not useful to study (Paris and Lambert 1979). Another, more important reason, is that the traditional paradigms used to explain residential mobility imply choice, and 'housing choice is a concept that has seldom been applied to the study of the allocation of public housing' (Kintrea and Clapham 1986, p. 1281). The processes involved in moving into, and within the public housing sector are quite unlike those operating in the private housing market. Public sector mobility is determined by housing authority managers through administrative decisions concerning the allocaton of new tenancies and transfers of households within the public rental stock. These practices in turn reflect the objectives of public housing---as these objectives have changed over time, the nature of mobility within the sector has altered. [Introduction