Operationalizing a Responsibility Agenda in Australia’s Indigenous Communities: Confused, Doubtful and Subversive Public Housing Tenants

Supportive housing and surveillance

“…Such urban housing environments have received increasing international attention as spaces that can benefit health as well as produce harm (e.g. Bullen, 2015; Flanagan, 2015; Knight et al, 2014; Nethercote, 2015; Powell and Flint, 2009). For example, harm reduction as a key component of social housing has been advocated to reduce risk and promote social inclusion (Pauly et al, 2013).…”

“…1) The police are an integral team member with significant powers of enforcement, when there is not per se a crisis situation. As Ng and Van Deen (2015, p. 3) point out, “if a client on extended leave ii is found to be not taking their medication or perhaps violating a policy under their housing agreement, the police presence allows for the possibility of enforcement to happen.” 2) The VPD are significant institutionally-based knowledge producers that participate in an institutional nexus by helping to define the nature of mental health and addiction in ways that correspond with their institutional priorities, such as advancing biomedical/criminal frameworks that often counter cultural and structural understandings of mental health and addiction (Boyd & Kerr, 2015). For example, the more recent unitary conceptual framing of mental health and addiction by the VPD and other institutional players further serves to expand the carceral net of social control by linking mental health and addiction to discourses of dangerousness, the need for increased policing and surveillance, and the failure of deinstitutionalization (Boyd & Kerr, 2015).…”

Neoliberal Welfare, Minorities and Tenancy Support

“…Tenancy management inconsistencies identified in earlier work (Nethercote, 2014) were shown to convey mixed messages to tenants about the new conditions of their tenancy, heightening tenant confusion (Nethercote, 2015). In the context of tenancy support provision, most local professionals suggested these inconsistencies and mixed messages could undermine professionals' attempts to educate tenants about changes to their housing welfare conditions.…”

“…Finally, Nethercote (2015) also identified how issues such as poor maintenance and repairs services encouraged tenant scepticism of government commitment to their responsibilities to tenants, and that this in turn could discourage tenant adherence to their own responsibilities. In terms of tenant support provision, this tenant scepticism posed an additional barrier to tenancy compliance that professionals had to address.…”

“…This is the third in a series of articles that report on these housing reforms, based on qualitative case study research in Indigenous town camps communities. Both preceding articles concerned the implementation of mainstream public housing management and illustrated respectively how housing professionals interpreted and implemented new welfare conditionalities (Nethercote, 2014), and how tenants understood and experienced these (Nethercote, 2015). The first highlighted the potential for inconsistent tenancy management resulting from discretionary management practices; the second identified a range of structural and socio-cultural barriers to tenancy compliance.…”