A longer lease on life: issues for older renters

With a surplus of $3.9 billion for 2016-17, the 2018 NSW State Budget had its winners and losers. The latter include seniors and renters. This blog examine some of the issues confronting older renters.

How does one define 'older person'. There is a helpful discussion of the definition of 'age' in the Australian Law Reform Commission's Discussion Paper on 'Elder Abuse'. Paragraphs [1.33] and [1.36] read:

The idea of someone being an ‘older’ person is a relative concept — chronologically, medically and culturally. It does not have a precise definition and specific ages may be used for particular purposes. For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) groups people into population age cohorts, and differentiates between ‘15 – 64’, ‘65 years and over’ and ‘85 years and over’. People over 65 are generally classified as ‘older’ for ABS purposes.

Family and Community Services’ NSW Ageing Strategy 2016-2020 (pp 26-28) identifies older people’s ability to live in affordable, accessible, adaptable and stable housing as a priority of the NSW Government. It asserts:

... older people increasingly prefer to ‘age in place’ and grow older in their own communities – close to friends, family and services.

The NSW Government does not have an explicit ‘ageing-in-place’ policy. Certainly, it would be worthwhile implementing an explicit policy and, further, establish benchmarks against which wider Government policies can be measured regarding consistency. The value of this will become obvious further into this blog.

Nevertheless, a number of significant documents commissioned as part of the NSW Ageing Strategy refer to it, where a basic principle underlying it being that older people know what is best for their own lives and have the right to make decisions on their own behalf. An ‘ageing-in-place’ friendly policy provides the incentives for individuals to remain living in a community to which they have a strong attachment, either in their existing residence or alternate accommodation, with service supports.

Dire circumstances

Alan Morris’s book entitled The Australian Dream: Housing Experiences of Older Australians draws on the stories of 125 Australian pensioners and compares their experiences with the trends and needs of an ageing Australia. He probes the growing divide between older private renters, those who live in social housing and pensioners living in their own home. Here's an excerpt about private renting:

It's like a pressure cooker. You don't know where to go or what to do.' ... 'It was so desperate, the search for affordable accommodation, that I went down with a heart thing and was rushed to hospital.

On 26 October 2016, quoting from Alan Morris's publication, Jennifer Duke says that at least 100,000 older Australians in the private rental sector are living in 'dire circumstances' ... and this figure is expected to grow substantially if current policies and approaches to housing affordability aren’t changed.

On 12 December 2016, Alan Morris penned an article for The Conversation entitled ‘Why secure and affordable housing is an increasing worry for age pensioners’. He writes:

An increasing proportion of older Australians on the age pension will be dependent on the private rental sector in coming decades ... and the prospects for this group are grim.

An increasing number of older women in the private rental market face homelessness and have been described as ‘the new face of poverty. Read an article called ‘Older renters: the new face of poverty’. It reads:

The evidence mounts. The number of older, single women in the private rental market increased by a massive 50 percent between the 2006 and 2011 ABS Censuses.

The private rental sector across Australia has grown in size and significance in the last 30 years. Between 2001 and 2010 about 1.7 million Australians dropped out of home ownership and shifted back to renting. More than one in three did not return by 2010.

Private rental now provides long term tenancy for a growing and diverse number of Australian households. If large numbers of long term renters aged 45-64 years remain in the rental sector, they could swell the number of long-term private renters aged 65 years and above quite substantially in the coming decades.

Many older women experiencing a housing crisis or homelessness have led conventional lives and never previously had a housing crisis. As private renters, especially in tight housing markets like Sydney and some regional centres, they are at great risk of unaffordable rents, insecure housing, eviction and homelessness.

Also, an excellent essay by Anwen Crawford picks up this same theme. She writes about 'Nowhere to go – older women and housing vulnerability’ and finds:

The number of older women who are rental tenants in Australia is growing, and these women ... are increasingly vulnerable to poverty and homelessness ... Housing affordability and security for rental tenants will only become a more pressing issue as Australia’s population continues to age. And with more people unable to afford to buy a home, changes to housing policy now will help to determine the living conditions of tenants in the future.

2016 Census

The 2016 Census found a significant increase in the number of people renting in New South Wales. Indeed, there was a slight shift away from home ownership towards renting. There were 826,922 renter households at the 2016 Census, which was 83,870 more than there were in 2011. To put this into context, that's almost double the increase we saw between 2006 and 2011. It also means our renting population has gone up in percentage terms since 2011, too - from 30.1% to 31.8% in 2016. It also means that more people are renting for longer. Read more here. On top of this, Australia’s population is ageing. Those aged 65 years and over now account for 16% of the total population, compared to 14% in 2011. The median age has increased to 38 years, after remaining at 37 years for the past decade. Read more here.

Following the release of the 2016 Census, there have been a number of reports highlighting the problems of life-long renters.

In March 2017, The New Daily examined the most recent population statistics. Australia is ageing and life expectancy is greater. The stats show that from 2012 to 2016, the proportion of the Australian population aged 65 and over increased from 14.14 to 15.27 per cent.

Kirsten Robb writes: 'Life-long renters face financial stress in retirement'... according to a paper by Swinburne University, which found more Australians are renting in retirement and facing financial stress. The report that she refers to is one by Andrea Sharam, Liss Ralston and Sharon Parkinson of Swinburne Institute for Social Research. They found:

The proportion of aged persons in Australia is set to increase significantly, posing many challenges. Amongst these is the growing number of households who lack housing security in retirement. ... Our findings indicate that social change, and adverse ‘critical life events’ have significant impacts on households by and at midlife, and beyond. Of particular concern is that the housing market itself is a key source of wealth accumulation and dispossession. A very marked outcome is that to be private renter at 45 years of age is likely to mean being a renter and highly impoverished, in retirement.

Teresa Somes of Macquarie University writes for The Conversation: 'More and more older Australians will be homeless unless we act now.'

Eileen Webb and Gill North write: 'Suitable, affordable housing is key to our population ageing well'.

Ben Phillips of the Australian National University writes for The Conversation:

... the more pressing social problem for Australia remains the lack of affordable rental housing for lower-income families that is close to jobs and services in our capital cities. ... An ageing population with potentially lower home ownership rates will add to this problem in future years.

And Ned Cutcher of Shelter NSW writes that more people are renting much later into life.

More recent media

You will find recent media coverage, reports and publications on older renters in this document.


What is the reality for older renters?

Various words have been used to described the plight of older renters: Overlooked, A distinct financial disadvantage, Condemned, Vulnerable and Financial stress … and that’s just for starters.

As discussed above, there are many issues confronting older renters. So here's my summary:

• Shortage of affordable housing in well serviced locations. True for all renters, but compounded if you are older ... Check out Anglicare’s annual rental affordability snapshot ... and National Shelter’s Rental Affordability Index, published in May 2018.

• Weak security of tenure. True for all renters, but compounded if you are older ... check out Choice’s publication entitled ‘Unsettled’. Read about it and find a link here. Also, check out the ‘Make renting fair’ campaign. Indeed, Australia fairs poorly in an international comparison of security of tenure for renters.

• Only token acknowledgement of ‘ageing in place’ ... The redevelopment of old public housing estates poses real hardships for many older tenants. The forced relocation of residents of Millers Point in inner Sydney highlights the failings of Government when only lip service is given to ‘ageing-in-place’. Read the blog in The Brown Couch here. In 2015 and 2017 the Tenants' Union of NSW made submissions to Elder Abuse Inquiries of both the NSW Legislative Council and the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) here and here. We argued that a government policy, in itself, may constitute a form of elder abuse. We submitted that the NSW Government’s decision to relocate all the social housing tenants in the suburb of Millers Point is an example of systemic elder abuse.

• Restricted access to home modifications ... private landlords have little incentive to modify properties to suit the needs of older tenants. Older renters are forced to move as dwellings are no longer appropriate to their needs and residential tenancy legislation fails to adequately address this. Here’s the current state of play.

• Residential land lease communities (also called ‘residential parks’) as an alternative for older people ... Today business is viewing residential parks as money-making ventures, with some being promoted as an alternative to retirement villages. But, homes in residential parks, once seen as a cheaper option, now are regularly sold for amounts over $300,000. Indeed in 2016, two on the North Coast of NSW sold for over $1 million. Residents may own their home, but they do not own the land and remain vulnerable should the park be sold from under them.

• Pets is an issue with particular meaning for older tenants. Check out this site. Recently, there has been increased media coverage of this issue in Australia. Read Wendy Squires’ article called 'Landlords, have a heart and let your tenants have a pet'. The Tenants Union of NSW wants to see the decision to keep pets to sit with the tenants rather than the owners.

What can we do?

For an excellent discussion on what to do in order to address the more dire needs of older renters, check out the 'Ageing on the Edge’ report released on 29 November 2017. It contains thirteen recommendations that the NSW Government can act on now. The Tenants’ Union of NSW is represented on the ‘Ageing at the Edge’ Working Group in NSW. You will find a summary of the report here and the full report here.

Postscript on 26 July 2018

Here's three new links which are food for thought ...

Allison Worrall writes: 'Choice of food or rent: Housing crisis deepens.' Read her article here.

Isabelle Lane writes: 'Older Australians are falling off the housing ladder and face spending their retirement as renters, with the situation expected to worsen for coming generations.' Read her article here. You may check out Grattan Retirement Incomes Model (GRIM) here.

AHURI provides an excellent analysis of the situation facing older low income tenants in the private rental sector. This link also points to some current research. Check it out here.

Happy International Women's Day!

In celebration of International Women's Day, the women of the TU have enthusiastically produced a special edition of Tenant News – our printed publication for tenants.

At the 2011 Census there were more than 950,000 women living in rented homes across New South Wales. Today there will be many thousands more. This issue of Tenant News tells some of their stories – stories of struggle and hope in finding home.

You’ll find women writing about the legal insecurity that impacts on their ability to make a home when renting, and about how LGBTIQ, refugee and older women face discrimination in the rental market. We also explore public housing redevelopment policies and more.

The common thread in all these stories is the search for stability, liveability and affordability when making a home. Renting laws can be changed to facilitate these basic needs. In our submission to the Residential Tenancies Act Review, we've asked Minister Dominello to do this by including changes to the law on evictions, rent increases and repairs. Read our full recommendations for change in our submission.

We've printed 4,000 copies of Tenant News – you should already have yours if you're on our postal list. If you'd like a copy (or many), please email us. Copies are free for tenants and community workers!

Please help us by giving Tenant News to other tenants, community workers and clients.

Stories in this issue include:

Women finding home

Women from a refugee background face a multitude of challenges and barriers when trying to find a place to call home in Australia. Read more

More than bricks and mortar

Robyn lives in south western Sydney and has experience as a tenant who has been through a redevelopment process in public housing. Read more

Women working for change

We talked to six women who live in residential parks who are all creating meaningful change within their communities. Read more

Transgender women & homelessness

Although only 7-11% of the population are same-sex attracted and/or transgender they constitute 25% of the young people who are homeless. Read more

A champion for housing rights

Ruth Simon has dedicated herself to ensuring justice for Aboriginal people through her work, both paid and unpaid. Read more

The Tenants' Union turns 40!

On Thursday 11 February the TU launched our 40th anniversary celebrations with a BBQ at Northcott Community Centre. Read more

When home isn't safe

Indigo is a 20 year old queer person who has felt unsafe at times, due to the behaviour of housemates in share housing. Read more

Is my residence my home?

One of the themes for the TU's 40th anniversary celebrations is My House, My Home. But is that true if you rent? Read more

Women tell their tenancy stories

Six women give different perspectives on the life of a tenant and what 'home' means to them. Read more

Tenancy Q&A: Domestic violence

Cass Wong, TU Litigation Solicitor, explains the steps required for a survivor of domestic violence to terminate their tenancy. Read more

Transgender Women and Homelessness

Originally published in our recent International Women's Day Tenant News special, this article was written by Amy Davis, a PhD candidate at University of Wollongong and a staff member at the TU. We post it today as a small contribution to Sydney's Mardi Gras festival.


Transgender and trans are umbrella terms applied to people whose sense of themselves as gendered people (gender identity) is in some way incongruent with the gender assigned to them at birth, where assigned gender is typically based on the medical perception of external genitalia. 

Some (but not all) trans people choose to socially and/or medically transition by changing their name to one that is more appropriate to their affirmed gender, wearing gender-affirming clothing, accessing hormone therapy or undergoing surgical reassignment procedures, among other things. This article specifically addresses the experiences of trans women, being people who were assigned male at birth and who identify as female.

It is difficult to estimate the rate of homelessness among young transgender people since homelessness statistics are not collected in relation to trans status. However, taking same-sex attracted youth and/or transgender youth together, in NSW it has been estimated that although only 7-11% of the population are same-sex attracted and/or transgender they constitute roughly 25% of the young people who are homeless.

Parental rejection and family violence based on gender identity have been cited as causes of homelessness for young trans people in Australia. Homeless can mean sleeping rough on the streets but it can also mean staying in supported accommodation, ‘couch surfing’, or living in accommodation that falls below minimum community standards such as boarding houses. 

Fundamentally, homelessness is about insecurity which can in turn have devastating effects on a person’s mental and physical health. Given that trans people are already four times more likely to have been diagnosed with depression than the general population, the compounding effects of homelessness on trans people can be dire.

Alyssa, 23, who identifies as a bisexual trans woman, has been no stranger to insecure housing and accommodation stress. Her family lived in multiple houses across Australia when she was young and never stayed in one house for more than a year.

However, as she began to medically and socially transition in her early twenties it put more pressure on her relationships with her family members and in turn her housing situation.

“My parents were also not great people to grow up under,” Alyssa says. “In my early twenties I was also briefly homeless and couch surfed for a while until I found my feet living independently.” As Alyssa’s relationship with her father broke down it became necessary for her to leave home. “I was homeless briefly due to moving out of my Dad’s house into my grandfather’s house but he passed away shortly after I moved, so I couch surfed after that point, rather than go back to living with my Dad.”

Alyssa now lives in share housing after spending a year living in transitional, supported accommodation provided by Twenty10, a non-profit organisation which works with young people of diverse genders, sexes and sexualities. She is now partway through a computer science degree at the University of New South Wales and works full time at a software company. While Alyssa’s accommodation situation has improved since leaving home she says that being homeless puts a lot of pressure on the mental health of young trans people.

While Alyssa reached out to support services it took her a long time to find stable accommodation. Research has consistently found trans youth regularly experience harassment, violence and transphobic abuse when accessing accommodation services, both on the part of the workers and other service users. On top of that, staff and residents at some women’s services reject trans women or refuse to acknowledge their affirmed gender. For many trans people this not only means that they do not feel comfortable disclosing their gender identity when accessing services, but that some prefer to sleep rough rather than access accommodation services.

Alyssa says, “I branched out to a number of different places, most of them had negative results (being at capacity already, or not being very willing to help me as I’m a big queer). I found temporary year-long housing with Twenty10 which helped me a ton.”

Alyssa expressed concern around the lack of accommodation services for trans women and other LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer) people.

“When I was homeless in my twenties I had a few queer youth help groups to reach out to, particularly The Gender Centre and Twenty10, but nothing else aside from that,” Alyssa says. “I think that at the moment there is a big deficit of safe housing in general for queer women, particularly for women without a steady income or on a Centrelink allowance. Having more houses that can house at-risk people can only be a good thing in my mind.“

Research suggests that between an estimated 5,000 and 6,250 LGBTIQ youth are homeless in Australia on any given night, a significant proportion of which would be in NSW. The LGBTIQ youth service package as part of the Going Home Staying Home reforms is funded to accommodate only 140 young people, meaning that LGBTIQ youth homelessness is significantly underfunded in NSW. Alyssa would love to see a place that provides a safe and supportive environment for people like her who have experienced transphobia. In the meantime, however, young trans women like Alyssa are struggling with limited support.

For more info and resources, check out twenty10.org.au and gendercentre.org.au

Support women's services

Two good causes for women need your support.

For nearly 40 years a network of women-only refuges in inner Sydney has given life-changing shelter and support to women and their children. Under proposed changes to the funding of homelessness services, most of these services will close. They want the NSW State Government to think again. Follow the link above to read more about the campaign.

And for six years the Women in Prison Advocacy Network has given life-changing support to women who have left prison, or who are just about to leave, and who need help transitioning to life outside (help like finding a place to live, after Housing NSW has gotten you to relinquish your social housing tenancy so that homelessness awaits).

Earlier this year, the Federal Government cut WIPAN's National Crime Prevention funding, so it needs your help to keep going. Read WIPAN's campaign brochure here.   

Women in public housing history

In our commemoration of the centenary of the NSW public housing system, we've noted the roles played by John Rowland Dacey, Jack Fitzgerald, Bertie Stevens, Bill McKell, Robert Menzies* and Frank Walker... and to a man, all of them are men! This won't do, because women have played a big part in the history of public housing. Here we note three of them.

(Annabelle Rankin, Federal Minister for Housing 1966-1971)

First, a bit of background. Although the NSW public housing system got started in 1912, its operations were very stop-start and experimental, and its institutions very unsettled, until the 1940s. It really became an enduring part of the policy landscape – and the landscape of our cities and towns – after 1945, when the Commonwealth began funding State Governments to build and operate public housing under the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement (the CSHA).

The involvement of the Commonwealth in public housing was a core recommendation of the Commonwealth Housing Commission (the CHC), a board of inquiry appointed in 1943 by Ben Chifley, as Minister for Post-War Reconconstruction, to report on '(a) the present housing position in Austrralia, and (b) the housing requirements of Australia during the post-war period'.

The CHC's inquiry was a huge undertaking, hearing 948 witnesses, visiting 53 towns across every State, and producing in 1945 a thumping 327-page report. This report was a comprehensive statement of the state of the art of mid-twentieth century housing policy, with 95 major recommendations, including Commonwealth finance for State public housing authorities, the creation of State planning authorities and town planning legislation, Commonwealth involvement in building technology research and training, even land nationalisation. It also set out a statement of principle for housing policy that still rings true:

We consider that a dwelling of good standard and equipment is not only the need but the right of every citizen – whether the dwelling is to be rented or purchased, no tenant or purchaser should be exploited for excessive profit.

Two women were instrumental in the work of the CHC. Mary Ryan was a member of the Commission. An unappointed social worker, Labor Party activist and resident of Portland, in Chifley's electorate, Ryan had trained and worked as a nurse and, before that, as a domestic servant. In fact, even before going out into domestic service she had run a household: from the age of 13, she ran the house for her parents and five siblings after her mother recovered from the loss of two other children. The experience made her an advocate for improved housing conditions, particularly in relation to the services and utilities provided in them, and the community facilities provided without. This interest was reflected in the CHC's recommendations for the planning, financing and provision of community facilities in conjunction with public housing.

Mary Willmott Phillips was secretary to the CHC. In contrast to Ryan, who never attended high school, Willmott Phillips held an economics degree from Sydney University and was one of the first tertiary-educated public servants in Canberra. She was also one of the first married women in the Commonwealth public service (her husband, J G Phillips, was an economist in the public service and later Governor of the Reserve Bank). Pat Troy, in his history of the Commonwealth's involvement in housing policy, describes Willmott Phillips's work for the CHC:    

She worked closely with [Director General of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction, H C 'Nugget'] Coombs undertaking, commissioning and assembling research material for the CHC, managing the often turbulent relations with some of the CHC's advisory committees, the other Commissions, government and other agencies, generally keeping the CHC on the rails. She revealed exquisite diplomatic skills in dealing with some of the more egocentric 'experts' she encountered and also drafted much of its final report. The completion of the report on issues of such complexity and magnitude in the brief time available was largely due to her organisational skills and clarity of vision.

These two women not only helped ensure that the interests and views of women in relation to housing were considered in public housing policy making, they helped ensure that public housing policy happened. The CHC's recommendations were reflected – albeit imperfectly – in the first CSHA, which built almost 100 000 dwellings for public rental – that's one in every seven dwellings built in Australia in the 10 years from 1945. (Almost 38 000 dwellings were built under the first CSHA in New South Wales, about 18 per cent of all dwellings built here.)

Our third female pioneer in public housing policy came almost a generation after the CHC and the first CSHA. Senator Dame Annabelle Rankin (pictured above) was appointed Housing Minister by Harold Holt when he became Prime Minister on the retirement of Menzies on Australia Day 1966 – making Rankin the first woman to be appointed to a federal ministerial position that administered a department.

At the time of Rankin's appointment, the CSHA was in its third version and was just about to expire. It and the second CSHA, as we've discussed previously, were quite different from the first, having diverted a large part of the Commonwealth's funds – and the State housing housing authorities' dwellings – out of public housing and into owner-occupation. Meanwhile, other tensions and challenges in housing policy were opening up. Land price inflation, driven by speculation and the Government's encouragement of owner-occupation, was accelerating, and making the business of building public housing increasingly expensive. More flats were being built, both by the private sector (spurred by land price speculation, facilitated by the advent of strata title) and by the State housing authorities (motivated in part as a defence against the rampant sale of public housing houses). On the issue of slum clearance, there were several views within the Federal Cabinet: one was that the Commonwealth should encourage and support the redevelopment of inner-city slums into high-density public housing, the better to concentrate presumably Labor-voting tenants in a relative few electorates; another view (Rankin's) was that slums should be redeveloped into housing marketed to higher-income households, and the proceeds used to build outer-suburban public housing estates; yet another view was to do nothing in particular and leave it to the States. 

Rankin approached her role as Housing Minister with the objective of developing a wider housing policy within the Commonwealth Government. In particular, she sought to give the Department of Housing, which at that stage really just administered grants, a wider research and policy advice function. This meant employing some policy officers – something Rankin sought permission to do, literally for years, against the resistance of officers of the Treasury, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Public Service Board. In Troy's history, a section titled 'the Office of Circumlocution' details the extraordinary (or sadly, perhaps not so extraordinary) lengths that senior bureaucrats went to to frustrate the development of expertise and policy advice outside the traditional centre of power in the Treasury. Troy observes:

Housing and urban issues were becoming matters of social and political interest at the time. Whitlam was beginning to make political capital out of the housing, planning and development failures that were increasing obvious int he major cities. Rankin sensed this but was unable to carry her colleagues with her.... The history of the Commonwealth's involvement in housing and urban policy issues might well have been different had Treasury not been so obdurate in its opposition to the ambitions of [Rankin].

That's just three women who have made a contribution to the history of public housing. Following Rankin there have been other female Housing Ministers; there have also been, and are increasingly, many women in executive positions in public housing bureaucracies, and in local public housing offices (where they are almost certainly a majority). Women are running the peak community organisations for the social housing system, and so many of the local organisations and residents' groups, and are generally keeping the whole thing going.

* Fans of part one of our critique of Menzies' 'The Forgotten People' – yes, both of you – will be excited to learn we haven't forgotten and will return with part 2 soon.

Happy 173rd Birthday, Octavia Hill

The nineteenth century was the great age of the reformer, and one of the greats of the age was today's birthday girl, British housing and charity reformer Octavia Hill (1838-1912). She's not much remembered these days, but in her own time she occupied a pedestal similar to Florence Nightingale's; indeed, at the First Australasian Conference on Charity in Melbourne in 1890, the convenor, when asked about the proper organisation of charity, could answer 'oh, the best authorities are St Paul and Octavia Hill.' And her unacknowledged influence persists in social housing tenancy management today.

(Octavia Hill, looking not a day over 130.)

Hill was a reformer in the classical liberal tradition of working upon the 'character' of poor and working people – 'character', in this intellectual tradition, being a kind of mediating substance between the degrading, demoralising circumstances of the modern city and the free will of the liberal subject. Character consisted in habits, particularly of thrift, restraint and duty; these habits applied could build up more character.

Hill's particular innovation was to work upon the habits of character through the landlord-tenant relationship. She described her philosophy in evidence given to the 1885 Housing Royal Commission:

The people's homes are bad, partly because they are badly built and arranged; they are ten-fold worse because the tenants' habits and lives are what they are. Transplant them tomorrow to healthy and commodious homes, and they would pollute and destroy them. There needs, and will need for some time, a reformatory work which will demand that loving zeal of individuals which cannot be had for money, and cannot be legislated for by Parliament.

Thanks for the 'love', Octavia! Hill pursued her 'reformatory work' by managing tenancies for poor households, on a ‘five per cent philanthropy’ basis, in houses owned by private landlords and her own supporters. Bernard Bosanquet, a contemporary and supporter, described Hill’s techniques as proceeding on ‘the simple but not familiar idea that a landlord has a moral duty to his tenant’:

The system consists in the employment of trained women as agents and rent-collectors, who manage the property as any decent owner ought to manage it, but with a good deal of individual supervision…. [I]t is absolutely indispensable for the houses of people who have lost the habit of living in comfort and cleanliness.

Hill and her workers attended to repairs and improvements, and in return insisted on payment of the rent strictly as it fell due – less for any commercial reason than for the lesson in thrift it taught her tenants. And Hill knew her tenants: in particular, she used the practice of collecting rent directly from tenants at their premises to insinuate a surveillance of character into their households, by inquiring after the circumstances of household members and giving advice and warnings.

This work, Hill insisted, was to be done by women only – ‘ladies must do it, for it is detailed work; ladies must do it for it is household work’. Her system was, in effect, a new application of the technique of the ‘lady visitors’ developed earlier by charitable organisations in almshouses, workhouses and asylums, and Hill herself explicitly articulated the disciplinary power of her techniques with classical liberal reformism:

It is a tremendous despotism, but it is exercised with a view of bringing out the powers of the people, and treating them as responsible for themselves within certain limits… you cannot get the individual action in any other way that I know of.

This 'tremendous despot' did not establish a formal organisation through which to conduct her system of management – it is estimated that she managed about 2 000 tenancies at the time of her death, and her workers managed more in their own schemes – but several Octavia Hill Societies were established in Europe and North America, and in 1916 her workers established the Association of Women House Property Managers. At the time, Hill’s methods of individual visiting, questioning and advice were accepted as the state of the art in reformist tenancy management, as well as being taken up more widely in the emerging field of social work.

In other respects, however, Hill's vision for housing reform was overtaken by events. She refused to countenance the public provision of housing or housing subsidies – corrosive to the character of the poor, you know – so she did not have a direct hand in the development, at the close of the nineteenth century, of the first public housing schemes. On the contrary, these schemes where much more influenced by the vision of Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City reformers, and questions of physical form, rather than tenancy management. (Hill backed the wrong pony on female suffrage too – she was opposed to it.)

But Hill's method was still a ready resource for the growing housing authorities, so over the twentieth century the very personal aspect of Hill’s method became something of a minor theme in social housing practice. In Britain and around the world, housing officers would continue to perform intensive investigations into the circumstances of applicants and tenants, and counsel them in the correct uses of their dwellings and surrounding spaces. At New South Wales's own Erskineville estate, built in the 1930s by the NSW Housing Improvement Board, a genuine English woman housing officer was employed, in the words of Pix magazine, for ‘the delicate task of choosing the families most suitable…. Miss Margaret Ratcliffe, housing manager, investigated all their personal problems, individual requirements and visited their homes to see for herself under what conditions they were living’. Decades later, the NSW Housing Commission's field manual would instruct housing officers to 'observe sleeping arrangements when visiting the premises in connection with arrears reports, etc, and take appropriate action when irregularities are found.'

And this scrutinising, moralising, 'despotisic' theme in social housing tenancy management continues today. Ironically, it is in the operation of Housing NSW's income-related rent rebate system – which Hill would have deplored – that some of the strongest expression of this theme can be found. Under the rental rebate system, tenants are required to seek their landlord's 'approval' for any additional occupants, and keep the landlord apprised as to the amount and source of each of their household members' income. And when it comes to actually paying, rent in public housing has, as in Hill’s system, a moral significance. If anything, this moral significance is heightened by the fact that they are not economic rents. In a sense, the rent rebate system objectively and precisely accounts for each tenant’s need and inability, adjusts their legal liability accordingly, and what is left is the tenant’s responsibility. Where tenants fail in their responsibility in this regard, their own culpability is emphasised. What starts out as a system for administering to people's needs ends up as a regime for policing their domestic diligence and honesty.

Many happy returns, Octavia Hill.