In our last Editorial we reflected on the central role of housing in the COVID-19 pandemic (Rogers & Power, 2020). As this Issue goes to press, housing continues to play an integral role, both in the progression of the pandemic and responses to it. In Australia, where we are based and the government response to the pandemic has largely been well coordinated, there has been particular focus on public housing. An infection cluster in a high-rise public housing block in Melbourne led to a rapid hard-lockdown. This was a lockdown unlike any seen in Australia to this point, with the community surrounded by police and residents unable to leave their units for any purpose other than a medical emergency. Astonishingly, many reported learning of the lockdown on the television or arriving home to find their units surrounded by a heavy police presence (Henriques-Gomes, 2020a). In the period since, debates about the resourcing of public housing and support for residents have escalated. In the first days of the public housing lockdown reports emerged of broken lifts requiring residents to crowd together to get in and out of the high rise flats, insufficient, culturally inappropriate and out-ofdate food provided to detained residents, inadequate cleaning and supplies of sanitiser and related resources, and limited access to language-appropriate resources about COVID-19 (Henriques-Gomes, 2020b; Molloy, 2020). It is likely that these factors not only made it difficult for residents to cope in lockdown, but also accelerated the spread of the virus. In turn, there are broader questions emerging in the public debate about the purpose of public and social housing and how housing might be better designed and resourced to enable residents to respond to the pandemic. Public and social housing residents often face stigmatisation in the media and public life (Sisson, 2020). For many the lockdown was an extension of this. The acting Australian Chief Medical Officer, Paul Kelly, referred to the public housing high-rise buildings as "vertical cruise ships" (Murray-Atfield, 2020). This statement discursively linked the public housing community to a number of highly publicised and contentious COVID-19 'cruise ship' cases in Australia (in the most high profile case, known as the Ruby Princess debacle, at least 22 people died from COVID-19 related illness. These are small numbers by international standards but significant within the context of Australia's 111 COVID-19 related deaths to date. The
