The provision of housing has been the utmost priority for authorities, institutions, developers and households. Globally, the complexity of the problem is largely centred on housing distribution and affordability. Narratives have emerged regarding the financial mechanisms that aid or impede the affordability of housing. Nevertheless, a precursor to these interventions is the way in which individuals and societies as a whole construct their housing identities. Ideals such as ‘The Great Australian Dream’ signify social, economic and political belief systems. However, these structures cannot be objectively pertinent for all individuals in the same way. Social constructionism determines that we do not know an objective truth (Giddens 1993 [1976]), it is only through social interactions that people form a meaningful representation and understanding of their housing experiences.

This paper establishes how a subjective understanding of housing markets is constructed amidst competing narratives and interventions. Through an autoethnographic lens, the cultural, social and political experiences of the author provide an individual account of housing representation in four housing markets. Housing is deconstructed into its basic elements: the house, home and dwelling. This framework establishes an elemental reconstruction of life history based on social relations rather than predetermined cultural interpretations.

Populations and wealth are rising in disaster-prone areas, and the role of insurance is changing. The prioritisation of insurance as the disaster management tool of choice that shifts responsibility (and blame) onto households and businesses is rhetorically persuasive to some, and politically abhorrent to others. Yet such a move invariably manifests spaces and actors that may re-configure, counter or disrupt local ethics and politics. Presenting early findings from what we believe is the first national-scale study of its kind, we identify new dimensions in the complex relationship between householders, natural disasters, and house and contents insurance. We offer new insights into the phenomenon of under-insurance, providing support for the idea that insurance and insurers are contributing to increasing socio-economic polarisation in disaster-prone areas. We also explore our finding of a relationship between trust and insurance uptake, observing that these patterns may well indicate localised responses to the impacts of disasters and the limitations of insurance. Associations with trust, combined with the socially and spatially variegated nature of under-insurance that we report not only have the capacity to entrench urban socio-economic polarisation, these patterns also indicate the likelihood of situated ethical and political responses to this phenomenon that exceed neoliberal aspirations.

In Sydney, mass social housing relocation projects are underway as the NSW government, somewhat controversially, seeks to redevelop existing social housing sites, particularly those located in prime real estate areas. The Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) is responsible for this tenant relocation processes as part of the government’s Communities Plus program. Beyond the problematic political dimensions of such an initiative, the physical relocation of social housing tenants is a task fraught with challenges. Relocation is not just a logistical planning problem, rather it is one that needs to consider various emotional, financial, community and health impacts of an already vulnerable population. While existing studies have examined broad policies of housing relocations and the effects of these on affected social housing tenants, there is a lacuna in terms of understanding such dynamics from the perspective of relocation agencies and their staff. We address this research gap by exploring the implementation of the Communities Plus program in the Ivanhoe Estate in north-west Sydney. Drawing on interviews with FACS relocation coordinators and social housing tenants, we analyse how relocation coordinators negotiate their roles, responsibilities and emotional investments in this challenging and politicised process.

House prices have shown to vary by structural, locational and neighbourhood characteristics of houses: structural attributes are the built qualities such as number / type of rooms, living area, car spaces, parquet flooring, material quality etc.; locational characteristics consist of proximities to various amenities in the city such as better schools, open spaces, health services and access to public transport; and neighbourhood features may include socioeconomic characteristics and the crime rate in the locality. The international literature in particular has recently included ‘neighbourhood status’ as a key determinant of house prices. This paper examines the role of ‘suburb status’ in house price formation. The assessment focuses on some of the elite and most expensive Australian suburbs in North and Eastern Sydney. The comprehensive dataset includes housing transactions in 2011, locational characteristics computed using Geographic Information Systems software and neighbourhood features calculated using the ABS Census data. The hedonic model, a technique used to analyse house price effects of physical, locational and neighbourhood characteristics, is improved with the application of spatial hedonic models in order to address the potential ‘omitted variable bias’. The reliable estimates will provide a basis to evaluate the implicit values associated with the status of specific suburbs.