Precarious residence: Indigenous housing and the right to the city

Geoforum 85 (2017) 167–177

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Precarious residence: Indigenous housing and the right to the city a,⁎

Sarah Prout Quicke , Charmaine Green a b

MARK

b

UWA School of Agriculture and Environment, The University of Western Australia, 35 Hackett Dr, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia Western Australian Centre for Rural Health, PO Box 109, Geraldton, Western Australia 6531, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Urban Indigenous Housing policy Dispossession Displacement Precarity

Drawing on findings from a study of Indigenous housing in a regional Western Australian city, this paper examines the experiences of Indigenous peoples as a particular set of ‘right bearers’ within the right-to-the-city discourse. In settler-states, colonial discourses of absence, threat, and authenticity have informed policy frameworks that have militated against various Indigenous claims of belonging, rights, and aspiration in relation to urban places. Housing has been a representative domain of struggle in this respect. Consequently, today, Indigenous peoples have disproportionately high rates of dependence on more volatile and discriminatory forms of tenure than their non-Indigenous counterparts. The paper examines the incongruence between State aspirations to move (Indigenous) people along a housing continuum in urban environments, and the actual experiences of Indigenous urban residents, which fix discursively on barriers to such movements. It also traces the deleterious, displacing impacts for urban Indigenous households of the retreat of the State in its role as a landlord for the socio-economically disadvantaged, and in responding to market signals and particular sociological theses regarding poverty, with specific spatial logics. In so doing, we advance two interwoven arguments. First, we assert that Indigenous people face a unique precarity in the Australian urban housing system, which is a result of both colonial and racially discriminatory forces, and economically discriminating processes such as capital concentration and the commodification of land. Second, we contend that this precarity sets many Indigenous people on housing career trajectories that are antithetical to policy intentions.

1. Introduction With respect to issues of urban social and spatial justice, Henri Levebvre’s (2003, 1996) conception of the ‘right-to-the-city’ has become a fertile, if highly variegated, ground for dialogue and action amongst both scholars and practitioners over the last decade. The rightto-the-city might be broadly conceived of in this context as the participatory and common right of urban residents to be actively engaged in the work of city formation in ways that produce just and inclusive outcomes. In his elaboration of the concept, Harvey (2008) describes the increasing commodification of urban space, land and housing wrought by the entwining of capitalism and rapid urbanization processes. He argues that this entwining animates a process by which rights to the city, and the power of decision-making about its formation (in terms of land use planning and culture), are conferred upon the wealthy few who direct the process of commodification, and are increasingly inaccessible to the socio-economically disenfranchised (Harvey, 2008). Here, the ‘use’ rights of urban inhabitants are positioned in threatening opposition to property rights as conceived within liberal democracies

⁎

and granted by the state (Purcell, 2013). Under this logic, urban inhabitants without property rights can be, and often are, subjected to displacement processes (such as gentrification) that push them to the urban periphery. For Lefebvre and Harvey, the-right-to-the-city is not conceived of as a natural or normative right. Rather, it is struggled for (Njoh, 2015; Purcell, 2013). It is a clarion call to city inhabitants to participate in the formation of the city in ways that push back against the unbalanced power base of those who orchestrate the escalating commodification of land and space. In post-industrial cities, affordable and secure housing tenure has become a key battleground in this struggle. Recent scholarship has focused in particular on the contraction of public housing sectors and the deliberate dismantling of public housing estates (Aalbers and Gibb, 2014; Darcy and Rogers, 2014; Kadi and Ronald, 2014; Samara et al., 2013). Much of this work recognises that the struggle for the right-to-the-city, and the related struggle of many individuals to access affordable and secure housing arrangements, is not contested exclusively in the domain of the political economy. It is not simply a question of class structures. As Wienstein and Ren (2009: 407)

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Prout Quicke), [email protected] (C. Green).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.07.023 Received 23 November 2016; Received in revised form 6 July 2017; Accepted 26 July 2017 0016-7185/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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She goes on to argue that to be deprived of access to adequate housing ‘is to be deprived of the very possibility to be part of and enjoy the city life’ (Rolnik, 2014: 295). However, like the right-to-the-city, the concept of a right to affordable housing is not normative or natural right. It is struggled for and contested. As Morris (2010) notes, if the right to housing were defined as a real right to affordable, adequate, and secure housing tenure, many Australians, for example, simply would not have it. Very few countries, Australia included, have made any attempt to embed such a right in policy or legislation. In fact, many researchers examining questions of urban housing access in wealthy countries note several trends that are eroding the possibility of realising such a right for socio-economically disadvantaged households. In the United States and UK, for example, Fenton et al. (2013) describe processes of gentrification that foster the suburbanisation of poverty, as well as shrinking public housing sectors that further limit the housing options for the poor. In the United States in particular, the contraction of the public housing sector has been coupled with highly contested ‘deconcentrating poverty’ (Arena, 2013; Samara et al., 2013) and ‘neighbourhood effects’ (Goetz, 2010) policy approaches that mark a definitive shift in the spatial logical of public housing provision away from concentrated estates toward more dispersed arrangements. These same logics have also gained significant momentum in Australia (Darcy, 2010, 2013; Darcy and Rogers, 2014; Morris, 2013; Shaw, 2007). However, as Arthurson and Darcy (2015) note, the history, sociology and geography of the public housing system in Australia is distinct from both the UK and the United States. They identify two key differences. First, much of the public housing mass-produced in Australia between the 1950s and 1970s was lower density, single detached dwellings in more outlying suburban estates, compared with the predominance of higher density, inner-city developments in the UK and United States. Second, unlike in many European countries, public housing tenure in Australia never exceeded 10% of the total stock in any state jurisdiction (Arthurson and Darcy, 2015). In Australia, affordability and homeownership have been the twin foci of housing policy since the first Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement was signed in 1945 (Hayward, 1996).2 In Western Australia (WA), where the present study is located, declining housing affordability in the wake of a sustained resources boom (Cassells et al., 2014), and an aging stock of public housing units not being replenished and expanded at a rate commensurate with demand,3 led in 2010 to three important housing policy developments that have remained the guiding framework for housing policy, and had significant implications for access to affordable and secure urban housing tenure. The first was tighter eligibility criteria for public housing. Now the system accommodates only the most marginalised households: usually those with multiple, complex forms of disadvantage. The second was a greater investment in diversifying the social housing sector (Department of Housing, 2010). In line with national trends (Morris, 2013), the State’s 2010–2020 housing strategy set out a plan for encouraging the not-for-profit sector to play a greater role in the provision and management of affordable rental housing. It argued that partnerships with the not-for-profit sector are a key mechanism for creating a ‘contestable market’ to alleviate the shortage of affordable housing for middle- and low-income earners in urban areas. However, it also made

note, rights to the city are also socially and culturally mediated. For example, historical and contemporary processes of colonisation, can also serve as critical mediators of the right-to-the-city for Indigenous peoples (Peters and Lafond, 2013). While the literature on the right-to-the-city has explored the experiences of certain disadvantaged ethnic minorities (such as African Americans) in respect of diminishing access to affordable and secure housing tenure, very little scholarship has explicitly situated Indigenous peoples within this conceptual terrain (Njoh, 2015). This paper examines the struggle to access affordable and secure urban housing tenure amongst Indigenous Australians. Drawing on empirical case study findings, as well as a collection of other Australian studies, we argue that a potent combination of capitalist and colonial forces exerted on urban areas produces a particular precarity1 in the urban housing system for a disproportionately large share of Indigenous peoples. This precarity is underpinned not just by higher rates of socio-economic disadvantage, but also by subliminal discursive challenges to the viability of urban Indigenous presence and belonging wrought by the legacy and ongoing effects of colonisation. Our analysis draws certain parallels with Porter’s (2014) critique of urban planning systems, in which she brings together observations regarding processes of colonial dispossession of Indigenous land, and displacement imposed upon urban residents through gentrification and urban renewal (Porter, 2014: 388). She contends that though they are distinct processes “separated by time, space, politics and culture” (Porter, 2014: 388), they share important similarities in respect of the subjectivities (residents that are positioned as ‘moveable’) and ‘possessory politics’ at play. In this paper, we seek to highlight how the dual dynamics of historical colonial dispossession and contemporary processes of urban change that generate displacement, have in fact intersected to apply significant pressures on many urban Indigenous households. Acts of colonial dispossession and subsequent policies that excluded Indigenous peoples from emergent Australian cities and towns, fueled a spatial logic that positioned authentic Indigeneity as antithetical to urban landscapes. They militated against the assertion of Indigenous urban belonging and genuine equality of access to the urban housing system. We will argue that the resultant contemporary socio-economic and socio-cultural marginalization experienced by many urbandwelling Indigenous households, leaves them more disadvantaged by the discriminating practices that govern the private real estate market, and proportionately more dependent on a public housing sector characterized by increasing disinvestment and de-concentration. In the study reported on here, Indigenous people have responded by actively advocating for decolonized housing policy and practices that locates them as critical co-labourers in the work of addressing these marginalizing and discriminating practices and processes.

2. A right to housing? Australian housing policy in context A growing body of scholarship argues that a right to affordable housing is a precondition of realising any meaningful right-to-the-city. Raquel Rolnik, former UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on the right to housing and noted Brazilian scholar has described the right to housing as ‘a condition that has to be fulfilled in order to ensure the exercise of belonging [in the city] in all its aspects’ (Rolnik, 2014: 295).

2 Within the Australian Federation, each State became responsible for managing its own public housing system using grants provided by the Commonwealth government from major, multi-year agreements referred to as Commonwealth-State Housing Agreements. 3 For example, data from the Productivity Commission show that over the decade from 2006–2015, public housing stock in Western Australia increased from 31 006 units to 33 361. The most significant growth (1869 units to 6608 units) occurred in the Community Housing sector, while there was a decline in the stock of Indigenous Community Housing from 3213 to 2493 units. However, over even the much shorter period from 2011–2015, the number of low income households in rental stress (a crude proxy measure of demand) increased by 12 352 (Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision, 2016).

1 We do not operationalize the notion of precarity in the most established scholarly sense as “something specific to work under neoliberal labor market conditions” (Lewis et al., 2014: 584), or to signal affiliation with broader activist movements and/or migrant exploitation (see also Gill and Pratt, 2008; Neilson and Rossiter, 2008 for a more detailed discussion). Rather, consistent with its broadened use in sociological and geographical literatures we employ the concept as a descriptor of “life worlds that are inflected with uncertainty and instability” (Waite, 2009: 416) and one that “more explicitly [than notions of vulnerability or risk] incorporates the political and institutional context in which the production of precarity occurs” (Waite, 2009: 421).

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Fig. 1. The housing continuum. Source: DoH (2010, p. 16).

housing strategy identifies Indigenous people as a population group that require specific support, no urban-based Indigenous-specific initiatives are discussed or introduced. There is no recognition of the colonial legacy of exclusion and discrimination of Indigenous peoples within cities and urban housing systems that may necessitate additional or unique support frameworks and practices. The policy goal for urban Indigenous public housing residents in WA appears to be no different than that of other public housing residents: movement into ‘optimal’ house tenure arrangements. This policy approach of absorbing urban Indigenous public housing into mainstream programs is problematic for at least two reasons elaborated in detail in this paper. First, it ignores the quite rational and contrary preferences of many Indigenous tenants for secure and affordable public housing tenure over what they view as unstable market-based alternatives. Second, and relatedly, it discounts the numerous barriers that many Indigenous households face in moving along the continuum.

clear that a key driver of this policy pivot was the expense of public housing provision, in terms of both capital, and recurrent operational, costs. The strategy sought to position the State as “… an arms-length enabler and broader policy resource on housing issues rather than the sole provider of subsidized public rentals” (Department of Housing, 2010: 25). A final key emphasis within the State’s housing strategy was its conceptualization of a ‘housing continuum’ (see Fig. 1) with homelessness and homeownership as the two extreme endpoints. It emphasised moving people quickly to their ‘optimum point within the overall system’ by increasing supply at all points and reducing blockages to “[transition] households toward options better suited to their needs and circumstances” (Department of Housing, 2010: 17). While the strategy stopped short of declaring explicitly what those ‘better options’ are, it is quite clear that they do not include the two left-most pillars on the continuum: “The concept of social housing for life for all tenants is not financially sustainable and disadvantages those on waitlists and in private rental stress” (Department of Housing, 2010: 27). The policy states that the State will increasingly look toward ‘limited-term intervention’ where housing assistance will reflect a ‘duration of need’ approach. Here, public housing residents are positioned as socially ‘moveable’ subjects, in a socio-economic sense. As Arthurson and Darcy (2015) note, the wider embrace of contested theories of cultural reproduction of poverty and ‘neighbourhood effects’ in Australian housing policy also render public housing subjects as spatially movable. ‘Poverty de-concentration’ approaches involve dismantling public housing estates with the twofold objective of revitalising socio-economically depressed areas by attracting economic investment, and increasing the exposure of poor households to homeowning or privately renting middle- and high-income households (Oakley et al., 2011). While existing tenants are re-housed elsewhere, their sense of community, and access to services and facilities can be radically altered. In line with these Australian policy trends, the most socio-economically vulnerable households in the community are subject to two forms of precarity in the urban housing system: a slowly diminishing public housing sector relative to need, and the potential for geographical displacement in the name of poverty de-concentration. Indigenous households in Australia are disproportionately likely to be amongst this group of socio-economically vulnerable households in urban areas, in large part due to the intergenerational impacts of colonial dispossession, particularly in urban areas. Though the WA

3. Urban indigenous housing experiences: colonial ‘dispossession’ in context Indigeneity has historically been constituted as invisible within, or antithetical and even inimical to, city formation processes. Byrne (2003) captures this eloquently when he recalls an incident during the earliest period of Australian colonial incursion where Governor Arthur Phillip and his party, stopping for lunch, became irritated by a group of local Indigenous people. Phillip recorded in his diary that he demarcated a circle around his party and made it clear that the Indigenous inquirers were not to come within it. Byrne (2003: 175) notes: “The spore from this first circle, borne across the continent on the wind of colonization, may be seen in the symbolic circles that white folk in Australia would later draw around their country towns, circles that Aboriginal people … would be discouraged from entering”. There is now a well-developed literature that chronicles how city formation processes in settler states such as Canada and Australia, in particular, have been key ‘tools of colonial dispossession’ (Blomley, 2004; Jacobs, 1996; Oakley and Johnson, 2012; Potter, 2012; StangerRoss, 2008; Wensing and Porter, 2015). Early in the colonial process as settler occupation intensified, restrictive surveying and town planning processes, conflict, disease, and arrests and forced removals decimated the populations whose customary homelands encompassed growing metropolitan areas. Colonial discourse began to reflect this emptying, 169

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in 2011–12, as the policy pivots described above were just beginning to take effect. Five general questions guided focus group discussions. They related to: the availability of housing for Indigenous people; barriers faced in securing affordable housing; common causes of overcrowding for Indigenous people; and coping mechanisms for Indigenous households experiencing housing stress. The make-up of focus groups followed a multiple category design (Krueger and Casey, 2000) with participants recruited through a variety of means. Four focus groups were conducted: one for Indigenous community leaders; one for adult Indigenous community members; one for Indigenous youth and young adults; and one for housing support and advocacy workers. Five additional semi-structured interviews were conducted with local representatives from each of the three local social housing providers, including three representatives from the WA Department of Housing (DoH), regarding both their policies and procedures, as well as their perspectives on the same themes discussed during the focus groups. Focus groups and interviews were digitally recorded and then transcribed. The data were analysed inductively through detailed reading and re-reading of transcripts, discussion of emerging themes between project researchers, first-level manual coding on printed transcripts, comparative note-taking regarding each focus group transcript, and further thematic coding using Nvivo9. The analysis of both focus group and interview data was reported back to key participants through seminars and a series of reports to provide them with an opportunity to evaluate and comment on the researchers’ interpretations and re-presentation of their insights and perspectives. In addition to these primary data collection methods, one of the two co-authors attended five local housing service provider forums held in Geraldton over the 18-month duration of the study. Approximately 35 additional community members and service providers who did not directly participate in the study attended these forums. Their views repeatedly aligned with, and expanded on, those expressed during the interviews and focus groups.

declaring cities and towns largely devoid of Indigenous presence. As a visible urban Indigeneity grew in time, this colonial rhetoric shifted to the need to confine the threat and/or nuisance of urban Indigenous presence on reserves of land at the fringes of emerging cities (Morgan, 2006; Prout Quicke and Green, 2016; Short, 2012). Over the last 100 years, Indigenous peoples have gradually secured more rights in urban localities through tireless campaigning, legal recourse, and broad shifts in policy at both State and Federal levels with respect to Indigenous affairs. However, scholarly work suggests that prevailing contemporary discourses continue to struggle to accept the legitimacy of urban Indigeneity. This struggle animates in two primary ways. First, as Porter (2013: 299) notes: “‘Traditional’ connections of Indigenous people to lands now urbanised are seen as simply impossible, swept away by modern urban life”. Numerous scholars have identified a persistent dogma in the contemporary colonial consciousness that consigns authentic Indigeneity to a wilderness past (Brough et al., 2006; Carter and Hollinsworth, 2009; Peters and Andersen, 2013). A powerful corollary of this colonial spatial logic is that Indigenous peoples who migrate to cities are assumed to have abandoned or forfeited any claims to cultural distinction from mainstream populations. Second, the attempts of Indigenous traditional custodians to lay claim to their rights to govern and manage customary territories within which city areas fall, are often met acrimoniously by governing institutions and some sections of the public who interpret them as threatening to private property regimes. These claims are most visibly expressed through heritage protection requests (Alexander and Yiftachel, 1997; Cox et al., 2017; Jacobs, 1996; James, 2012; Kerr and Cox, 2013) and native title claims in urban areas (Wensing and Porter, 2015). In essence, Indigenous presence in the city is often conceived as invisible, illegitimate, or threatening. Urban housing policy in Australia has largely followed these colonial fault lines. Though the first Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement was signed in 1945, and other States had already established public housing schemes, the first State-funded housing scheme for Aboriginal families in WA (the Native Housing Scheme) was not established until 1953. Access was highly selective and mediated through specific funding streams with deeply ideological architecture (Sanders, 2009: 315). In urban Australia, though specific funding was earmarked during the 1970s and 80s for Indigenous housing, these programs were not attentive to cultural difference in terms of housing design or tenancy management. The last decade has seen the remnants of these urban, state-funded, Indigenous-specific programs, retired. Furthermore, unlike in Canada, where Indigenous housing policy has pivoted in recent years toward increasing Indigenous self-determination in managing Aboriginal housing stock and programs, Indigenous Community Housing Organizations (ICHOs) in Australia have been exposed to greater vulnerability and pressure, particularly in urban areas (Milligan et al., 2011) through the process of increased diversification in the social housing sector. Though some ICHOs in Australia have survived and even grown in this changing provider landscape, smaller ICHOs, such as the one servicing the case study city, face considerable challenges in remaining viable. The introduction of a new set of social housing providers, some of which have much larger economies of scale (as companies with nation-wide and even international operations), into a defined funding space, creates additional pressures for smaller providers to meet new regulatory requirements and compete for available funding.

4.2. Case study background With an estimated population of approximately 38 151 at the 2011 Census, Geraldton is the fourth largest discrete metropolitan area in Western Australia, and the largest north of the capital city, Perth. The Indigenous share of the population in 2011 was estimated to be 11.3 per cent (Prout and Biddle, 2015), which is considerably larger share than in Perth (1.6%). This is consistent with national trends where regional urban centres tend to have a much higher proportion of Indigenous residents than major cities. Also consistent with many other regional centres in Australia, Geraldton’s colonial history included violent acts of Indigenous dispossession followed by urban planning practices and housing policies that sought to tightly control and spatially contain the remaining (and later growing) Indigenous population (see Prout Quicke and Green, 2016 for a more detailed discussion). The legacy of this history of dispossession, exclusion and then socio-spatial sequestering, is evident in the social and built landscapes today. Biddle (2009) found that Geraldton ranked as the 6th (of 71) most segregated urban centre in Australia, with many Indigenous households residing in and around the suburb that developed on the site of the ‘native reserve’ established in 1938 and officially decommissioned in the 1960s. As a consequence of this colonial history, there are complex and multilayered dynamics of Indigenous governance in Geraldton. As with many urban areas in Australia, questions of native title over Geraldton are complex, contested, and to date, legally unresolved. Since 1996, five separate claim applications over the area have been made to the National Native Title Tribunal. In March 2017, four of these applicant groups joined a single ‘Southern Yamatji’ claim that is yet to be determined. There are also numerous vibrant Aboriginal organisations in Geraldton that provide a variety of local services: from art and cultural services, to sport and employment, to a large-scale and highly successful Aboriginal medical service and an Aboriginal resource agency.

4. Methods and case study background 4.1. Methods The primary data presented below are derived from focus groups and semi-structured interviews with 34 participants (25 of whom were Indigenous) collected as part of a community-based research project in the Western Australian port city of Geraldton. The data were gathered 170

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that demand for affordable housing outstripped supply by a considerable margin. The comparatively lower rates of Indigenous homeownership in Geraldton (and across the urban settlements of Australia) mean that the majority of Indigenous households in urban areas do not have concrete and recognised urban property rights in the form of freehold or longterm leasehold title to land/housing. They have higher rates of dependence on more volatile, insecure, and discriminating forms of tenure. We now turn then, to examine how these dynamics play out in situ with respect to precarious experiences of urban residency for local Indigenous people.

In the wake of the demise of the national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), many of these organisations came together to form the Midwest Aboriginal Organisations Alliance (MAOA) in an attempt to fill the consequent void in regional Indigenous political representation and advocacy on key local social policy issues. While some of these organisations include members that would consider Geraldton their customary homelands, MAOA does not claim to speak for country and does not involve itself in native title matters. The issue of affordable local housing for Aboriginal people has been chief among MAOA’s concerns. That concern became the basis for the collaborative research project reported on in this paper. During planning meetings regarding the purpose of the research, several Indigenous community leaders expressed deeply held concerns about what they saw as a significant (and increasingly acute) under-supply of affordable housing for Aboriginal households in Geraldton. This, they felt was one of the key drivers of disadvantage within the community. They also expressed concern about the potential for displacement from homes for those Indigenous public housing tenants living in and around the site of the old reserve. As the city expands, this area, once peripheral to the town, becomes more central and valuable (and therefore vulnerable to redevelopment) within it. They worried that Aboriginal people, as they had been during the 1930s, would be pushed once again to the geographical and underserviced limits of the city. To understand these concerns, some further context on Geraldton’s economic and housing profile is necessary. Geraldton serves as the gateway to the State’s vast, sparsely settled north. Over the past 30 years, it has been on the cusp of a major infrastructure projects (such as the Oakajeee Port and Rail project4 and mine developments) that would accelerate population and economic growth in the city, but which either never progressed, or proceeded at a much smaller scale than anticipated. The city’s economy continues to centre around agriculture (and agricultural exports through the port), fishing and the regional service industry (with a focus on health and education). As Beer and Tually (2011) note, regional centres in Australia such as Geraldton have more volatile housing markets than major metropolitan areas due to the instability of the primary industries that underpin their economies and their limited economies of scale. Furthermore, the resource boom experienced in Western Australia during the mid 2000s created a two-speed economy across the State: those employed in the industry earned higher incomes while the rest of the population stayed the same or declined. Housing affordability declined, and low-income earners became even more likely to be dependent on social and public housing. As data from Prout and Biddle (2015) demonstrate, according to the 2011 census, the Indigenous tenure profile in Geraldton was fairly evenly distributed between the three main tenure types. 33.7% of Indigenous-identified households5 were homeowners, 33.3% were renting in the private market, and 32.9% were social housing tenants. By contrast, non-Indigenous households in Geraldton were predominantly (73.7%) homeowners, and private renters (20.2%), while only 6.1% were social housing tenants. As Fig. 2 shows, these differences by household Indigenous status are consistent with national data, which show a marked contrast between the tenure profiles of non-Indigenous households (NI) and Indigenous (I) households across major capital cities and regional centres such as Geraldton. It is critical to note, however, that social housing data likely reflect supply ceilings rather than real demand. For example, public housing application data for the city of Geraldton presented by Prout and Biddle (2015) indicate

5. Precarity in the private housing market A history of colonial dispossession, widespread exclusion from the housing market in Geraldton, and deliberate attempts to contain and transform Indigenous presence in the city, all mediate contemporary experiences within the private housing market. Evidence presented below suggests that the realities of socio-economic disadvantage wrought by colonial dispossession and exclusion, as well as market forces and ongoing discriminating practices within the system, render such experiences often stressful, insecure, and ultimately undesirable. The discussion first examines experiences of homeownership and then turns to the private rental market. 5.1. Home ownership: the ultimate aspiration? The small subset of homeowners who participated in this study described their experiences in positive terms. Being homeowners empowered them to be released from the shackles of regulation and surveillance that mark renting experiences; to assert control over what happened under their roof. However, the prevailing view amongst participants was that home ownership was not a viable, compelling, or particularly secure option for most Indigenous people in Geraldton. Socio-economic disadvantage was the chief explanation offered. Being eligible for a home loan required stable employment, saving a deposit, not having outstanding rental or repair and maintenance debts with the State, and having a good credit history. Often the need for other assets (such as a car or a washing machine) meant that Indigenous people were already struggling to repay existing loans and/or bills, leaving them with significant debts and/or a poor credit history: Once you have stuffed up in even repaying a phone bill or power bill or anything like that, getting money to actually buy a house is just nonexistent. Female Non-Aboriginal Participant No. 1 The sorts of homes that were more affordable (such as those available under the State’s scheme to assist people with purchasing their publicly-rented property) were generally only old, dilapidated stock that had been poorly maintained since being built in the 1950s and 60s: I know a lot of my clients have come and they would like to buy their own homes. That is what they aiming at, but where do they go? Where do they start? Because [the State] will say, ‘Righty oh, you can buy this house and pay it off’ but that is an old house, you know. Have new homes where they can start buying maybe. Female Aboriginal Participant No. 10 Other participants simply did not view home ownership as a secure option for them. One participant, for example, explained that he was suspicious that advice he might receive from a bank or broker would encourage him to enter into a loan arrangement that he would not be able to properly service. Socio-economic disadvantage and affordability pressures were also key drivers of alienation within and from the private rental market. However, as discussed below, this form of disadvantage was difficult to disentangle from broader processes of discrimination in private rental market.

4 Oakajee Port and Rail was a planned deepwater port to be located 24 km north of Geraldton, connected to an extensive rail network, that would transport iron ore from WA to various countries around the world. The development has stalled in development for numerous reasons including the inability of Japanese backer Mitsubishi to secure another equity partner. 5 A household is defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as being ‘Indigenous’ if one or more of its members identifies as Indigenous.

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100

Fig. 2. Tenure type in cities by indigenous status of household, 2011. Source: Data taken from Prout and Biddle (2015, Table 2: 60).

Percent of Households

90 80 70 60 Major Cities (I)

50

Regional Centres (I)

40

Major Cities (NI)

30

Regional Centres (NI)

20 10 0 Social Housing

Private Rental

Home Owner

Tenure Type

constitute more than 30% of their income, are considered high risk (Short et al., 2008). Secondary and tertiary processes of ranking and discriminating then occur, using additional criteria to determine risk factors in ability to pay and care for the property. Participants in the study noted that there are a range of common concerns related to lowincome earners, including unemployment, the probability of domestic violence or marital breakdown, Indigeneity (specifically here in relation to family size and cultural practices), and physical capacity. These reported practices all accord with the findings in this study. Property managers and owners naturally select away from applicants with larger and/or split households on low incomes, and Indigenous people in Geraldton are disproportionately represented in one or more of these categories. A number of participants drew this link:

5.2. Private rental discrimination The most common barrier identified by participants to renting in the private market was racial discrimination: “… once the owner knows they are an Aboriginal family, they will say No. (Male Aboriginal Participant No. 9). One participant suggested that it was common knowledge that only one or two of numerous private real estate agencies in the city would rent to Indigenous tenants. Multiple participants described applying for private rental properties, with excellent references, records, and stable employment in well-paying jobs, only to be rejected. The only logical conclusion they could draw was that racial discrimination was at play. Very little systematic investigation of racial discrimination in the private rental market has been undertaken in Australia, in part no doubt, due to the methodological challenges of so doing (Nelson et al., 2015). Nevertheless, existing reporting and documented evidence suggests that such discrimination is likely prevalent. A 2004 report by the Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) examining discrimination against Indigenous tenants in the WA public housing system, revealed widespread concern about discriminatory practice within the private market that drove these tenants to the public system (Equal Opportunity Commission, 2004). This finding led to a subsequent EOC investigation into the private rental system. The resulting Accommodating Everyone report summarised 70 cases studies that were submitted to the inquiry and demonstrated the particular difficulties faced by Indigenous and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) community members in the private rental sector (Equal Opportunity Commission, 2009). Many of the examples cited in the report, such as being told face-to-face that a property was no longer available, only to discover through another source this was untrue, or simply butting up against ingrained sector perceptions with regard to how Indigenous tenants might treat a property, have been identified in earlier studies in other parts of Australia and were echoed by participants in this study (Cooper and Morris, 2005; Flatau et al., 2005; Solonec, 2000). In their study of risk minimisation in the tenancy management process in three Australian states,6 Short et al. (2008), noted that property managers have a staged process for determining who will be best able to pay and care for the rental property. In the first ‘sorting’ stage, applicant income and any existing records in Residential Tenancy Databases (RTDs) are the key considerations. ‘Blacklisted’ tenants within an RTD (that is, those with a registered history of failed or troubled tenancies), and those for whom rental payments would

You know, it is difficult. The more kids that you have and your status, if you are single or if you are both unemployed, that is a barrier right there. You are never going to be chosen and that is just a vicious circle”. Female Aboriginal Participant No. 9 When offers of accommodation were made, participants suggested it was usually only for poor quality housing: They will offer us the most appalling houses that you can possibly find. I went to one last week to have a look … I just stood outside, turned around and walked back. I didn’t even go in. You could see it was dilapidated just from the outside … I said, ‘I am not going to give you my decent hard earned money for you to give me accommodation like that’. Female Aboriginal Participant No. 7 Participants also highlighted that Indigenous youth – teenagers and young adults who are becoming independent and starting their own families – were particularly vulnerable to the highly competitive nature of the private rental market: And especially young families just starting out, they have got no references. They have got no knowledge, no paperwork or anything like that to gain accommodation … [they’re seen] as a liability, as unsociable, young, and just mischievous and stuff, so the chances for them young parents for getting a place is pretty slim. Male Aboriginal Participant No. 6 Indeed, interviewees explained that the lack of housing options for young people – even in social housing – left many grandparents bearing the weight of housing their younger relatives (and their children) who could not find an independent place to live. In almost all instances, parents and grandparents felt obligated to take in their younger relatives because they didn’t want to see them homeless or living in unsafe environments. At the same time, they described feeling burdened

6 These were Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia. Although Western Australia was not included as a case study, it is reasonable to assume that the practices of real estate agents are similar nation-wide.

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qualified for public housing:

by having the additional boarders in their homes. Their routines were disrupted, the crowded conditions sometimes became volatile and frightening, their bills increased, and often they felt as though their young relatives did not contribute significantly to the household costs while they lived there. Participants also described getting ‘locked out’ of returning to the private rental market after a bad previous experience places them on RTD ‘blacklists’. They expressed concern about how this process was governed, what recourse tenants have to contest being placed on the database, and how long they remain on it once they had been registered. They explained that sometimes, private tenancies were jeopardised for circumstances beyond the control of the tenant, such as outbursts of family violence. Once blacklisted, however, the tenant is unable to secure another private tenancy rendering them dependent on social housing or the generosity of family members with secure housing. These concerns echo the broader findings of the 2009 EOC report, which expressed significant concern about how such databases are regulated and managed. The report found that although RTD blacklists, can serve as an important tool in risk minimisation for property managers and owners, they can also be used for unlawful discriminatory purposes (Equal Opportunity Commission, 2009). If racial discrimination could be avoided in the application process, affordability pressures were the next significant challenge to securing stable tenancies in the private rental market. A common view amongst both community members and service providers was that the State’s resource boom through the mid to late 2000s had inflated the private real estate market to such a degree that low-income households were effectively priced out of it. As one housing support worker explained, because most Indigenous people in Geraldton fall into the low-income category, they struggle to maintain private tenancies:

Yes, they can succeed by getting a job and earning this amount of money, but then once you are kicked out of the house, then it is struggling to get a private rental. So it is that gap in between there that everyone is falling down and just, ‘Oh well, it is too hard. Stuff it! I’ll go back to the way that is easiest. Female Aboriginal Participant No. 1 Stability of tenure was a critical consideration for many Indigenous people. Other studies have also demonstrated that this stability is highly valued amongst low-income earners more generally and that the private rental sector does not provide such stability (e.g. Hulse and Saugeres, 2008). It is a loosely regulated sector that responds rapidly to market forces and is primarily concerned with profit maximisation. Rents can be increased, tenancies can be ended, houses can be sold. These factors make the private rental market inherently unstable for all tenants. For Indigenous households, the legacies of colonial dispossession, which manifest in contemporary expressions of racial discrimination and intergenerational socio-economic disadvantage, as well as the operation of discriminating market forces that select away from the cultural characteristics of many Indigenous households (e.g. larger and/or nonnuclear families), conspire to compound their experiences of precarity within the sector. Unsurprisingly, these factors militate against the movement of many Indigenous households along the continuum into the private housing market. 6. Precarity in the public housing system The precarities facing Indigenous households in urban areas are not limited to the private housing market. A considerable body of research has developed over the last decade with respect to the challenges Indigenous households face within urban (including major cities and regional centres) public housing systems across the country (BirdsallJones and Corunna, 2008; Flatau et al., 2005; Milligan et al., 2011; Moran et al., 2016). One set of challenges, also described in methodical detail by participants in this study, relates to the policies and practices of State Housing Authorities (SHAs) such as the DoH, which often lead to disengagement from the system and subsequent barriers to re-entry, for Indigenous tenants. In Geraldton, concerns were expressed in relation to the confusing nature of the application and offer processes, particularly for those with poor literacy levels and/or limited experience with such processes (e.g. youth). There was also a perception that if the application process and long waiting period for an available house could be managed, Indigenous applicants tended be offer poorer quality housing:

So, effectively what happens is we try and house somebody but they can’t afford the rent so we are almost setting them up to fail right from the start. So we can get them into a house that they can’t afford … [and] they might be in there for three months, six months, and then they are out because they can’t afford the rent. Even just paying a car registration would have put them out. Female Non-Aboriginal Participant No. 3 Analysis of census data supports this account. Between 2006 and 2011, median personal weekly income increased for Indigenous people in Geraldton by $1 while median weekly rental costs increased by $63. By contrast, non-Indigenous median personal weekly income increased by $85 while median weekly rental costs increased by $75. Clearly, non-Indigenous households were better equipped to manage increasing private rental costs. Another consequence of inflation in the private real estate market is that a number of Indigenous households find themselves suspended uncomfortably in the widening expanse between the income requirements of the social housing and private rental sectors on the housing continuum. These households are above the income threshold for public housing eligibility, but still not earning sufficient wages to be able to afford average private rental housing over the long term. Both State and Federal governments recognised this problem. Respectively, they introduced: policy directives to put more ‘rungs in the ladder’ for middleincome earners through nurturing and diversifying the social housing sector; and a National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) that sought to increase the stock of private housing available for rent at 75 per cent of market value. However, the effectiveness of these initiatives remains to be seen. Further expansion of the NRAS scheme, which included 31 properties in Geraldton, has been suspended, and the two main nongovernment social housing providers in Geraldton both had such limited stock relative to need that participants viewed them as providing only marginal relief for Indigenous middle-income earners. A number of research participants described situations where local Indigenous people had either chosen not to apply for a job, or had quit their job, simply to ensure that their income was low enough to remain

“… but just looking at you they know if you’re Aboriginal: ‘We’ll just give you an older housing or something, you know, you can destroy or wreck or whatever.’”. Male Aboriginal Participant No. 5 Participants believed that there was also a lack of proactive tenancy support services offered to applicants and new tenants to ensure they understood their obligations and tenancy management practices sufficiently to avoid the accumulation of debt, the issuance of breach notices, or eventual eviction. According to participants the poor quality of housing on offer meant that tenant liabilities and maintenance costs accumulated easily, particularly if thorough property condition reports were not completed at the outset of the tenancies. The result was often a breach of the tenancy agreement leading to eviction. Regular changes in policy (with respect to the application process, tenancy management, and behavioural regulations) and personnel within the SHA bred confusion, suspicion and non-compliance amongst local Indigenous tenants (Flatau et al., 2005; Moran et al., 2016). These procedural challenges, participants suggested, produced their own forms of precarity, despair and often exclusion from the public housing system due to failed past tenancies. An evicted public housing tenant is required to pay back debt 173

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(either from damages or rental arrears) before they can return to the public housing waitlist as an applicant. Eviction then, almost always leads to secondary homelessness and crowded households amongst family and friends that provided refuge for evictees. DoH perspectives offered during interviews differed somewhat from these observations. While there was an expressed awareness of past challenges, the overarching view was that staff competence in cross cultural communication had improved markedly in recent years as had support practices and programs for incoming and ongoing tenants. One participant pointed to changes in the practices of introducing new tenants to their property with their appointed housing officer, and completing the property condition report together at that time, as one example of positive reform that protected against later disputes with respect to alleged property damage. Another argued that DoH had a good relationship with the vast majority of local Aboriginal tenants and given that there had never been a community-wide survey of Aboriginal customer satisfaction with DoH, it was difficult to gauge whether expressed concerns were widespread or particularly acute, and therefore widely discussed, for a small proportion of the Aboriginal population. Aboriginal participants also identified a number of attitudes and behaviours amongst some Aboriginal tenants that contributed to their inability to access and maintain secure tenancies. These included not properly caring for their property and sometimes failing to pay rent. They also pointed to the common practice of hosting visitors – a fundamental cultural norm – who sometimes caused damage to the house or elicited complaints from neighbours about noise and unrest. However, the greatest concerns identified in relation to the urban public housing system for Indigenous households, related to more basic supply shortages, and the prospects for spatial displacement under policy settings of poverty de-concentration. It is to these two concerns that we now briefly turn.

This example speaks to the uniqueness of the precarity that urban Indigenous households face, where culture, history, economics and politics intersect to create specific forms of challenge to the concept of rights-to-housing in the city. 6.2. The spatiality of displacement “… the other point I would like to bring up is how the state government acquires its land. It has taken all the prime land and gives it to the capitalists, the business people. What goes up the back again? Blacks up the back again, and what is waiting for us out there? Nothing!”. Male Aboriginal Participant No. 1 The prospect of spatial displacement under public housing policy settings of disinvestment, divestment, and poverty de-concentration is an aspect of urban precarity for Australian urban Indigenous households that has perhaps received the least attention in the literature. As aging public housing stock is decommissioned, and older public housing estates partially or fully sold off to developers (see e.g. Arthurson and Darcy, 2015) Indigenous tenants who are over-represented in the public system, are likely to be increasingly exposed to these forms of displacement. Some participants in Geraldton described perceptions of displacement in localised terms: There were two [really old] houses [on X Street] and they were occupied by Aboriginal people… The houses were demolished and there were three new houses put on that same property and no Aboriginal people were put back into that. So that is another thing. They demolish houses and they don’t rebuild for Aboriginal people. Male Aboriginal Participant No. 3 This participant did not elaborate on whether these homes had been sold by DoH, or simply rebuilt and other tenants placed in them. The distinction did not appear to matter to him and was not questioned by other participants. As previously discussed, similar concerns held by local Aboriginal leaders, were among the key drivers for initiating this research project. The issue of poverty de-concentration was also discussed by participants. Some felt that Indigenous public housing applicants were ‘set up to fail’ when they were offered properties in close in proximity to families with whom they were in conflict. This often led to what one participant referred to as ‘crowded streets’: where volatility, disruptive behaviour and/or property damage, were followed by tenancy breaches and evictions. On the other hand, as the following excerpt suggests, some participants believed that when Indigenous households are separated from other Indigenous household, they can feel isolated and culturally restricted:

6.1. The effects of state retreat from the sector As Flatau et al. (2005) note, the contraction of the public housing system in Western Australia is felt in most acute terms by Indigenous households who are disproportionately, and increasingly, represented in it. Every participant in this study agreed that there was a severe shortage of affordable, state-provided housing in Geraldton for Indigenous households. Participants described the anguish and logistical complexity associated with being placed on long waiting lists for a property: It just shoots you down in flames because you are there to get a process up and going and then you get a kick in the ribs by getting told, ‘You have got to wait for a 24 month period before availability of a house comes up’. You don’t know what is going to happen in that 24 months. You might not be kicking it. Male Aboriginal Participant No. 7

They are like with salt and pepper, you know, a few blacks over here and a few whites, and lots of whites over here, you know. You see that happening. The people that are out here isolated, when they try to be themselves and have their own culture they are caned for it. They are not allowed to have large family groups in that house. They are not allowed to have a party because they are making too much noise. Male Aboriginal Participant No. 1

In the absence of other housing options (either through a shortage of affordable housing options, or eviction from a previous tenancy), many individuals and families are absorbed into the households of relatives who feel obligated by demand-sharing sociocultural norms, to care for them (Memmott et al., 2012; Moran et al., 2016; Penman, 2008). This absorption, however, often produces more household crowding, placing pressure on those households and potentially putting their tenancies at risk, as was the case for this participant:

The socio-spatial geographies of public housing provision, and the potential for further displacement within the urban housing system, were clear concerns for Indigenous residents in Geraldton, who were themselves inextricably linked to a colonial past riven with damaging practices in these domains.

… I’ve already got our five foster kids. The mother got kicked out of her house … It’s less likely she gets her children back, so they are still with me. I’ve got my other daughter who had to leave her house because her family had a fight in it and it got damaged and she has got a big $8000 damage bill and she is slowly paying it off, but she is home with her four kids. So my house is pretty full. It is very hard at times to control. Things do get violent … You try your hardest to keep the rules, but you do have family that push that boundary.

7. The indigenous public housing subject: failed, disciplined, moveable? Other studies have explored the ways in which Australian public housing tenants are positioned in policy terms or public perception, as 174

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failed citizens (Arthurson and Darcy, 2015), and in the case of Indigenous tenants, as (problematically) subject to disciplining forms of welfare contractualism that have historically often been at odds with Indigenous cultural norms (Habibis et al., 2013; Moran et al., 2016). In this paper, we have argued that in addition to these subjective positions, Indigenous public housing tenants are also cast as moveable subjects. This ‘movability’ takes two forms: spatial displacement through the redevelopment and redistribution of public housing stock; and narrowing the economic and temporal thresholds of public housing eligibility in an attempt stimulate social mobility along the housing continuum into the private housing market. While all public housing tenants are rendered moveable subjects under these conditions, both present particular threats and challenges to the securing affordable and stable housing in urban areas for Indigenous households. In respect of spatial displacement, while practices of public housing redevelopment and deconcentration may alleviate tensions associated with crowded streets and the co-location of feuding neighbours, they can also produce a sense of cultural isolation and social detachment in urban environments that are often already hostile toward, and resistive of, Indigenous presence. If/when Indigenous public housing tenants are further suburbanised, or ‘moved up the back again’, they are likely to be further displaced from the services and infrastructure they require access to. Apart from these more pragmatic considerations, any practice of being forcibly relocated can arouse understandable anxiety and even outrage in the context of historical (and intergenerational) experiences of land dispossession and exclusion from urban spaces. In respect of social mobility, experiences of colonial dispossession and a series of subsequent policy frameworks that sought to reshape Indigenous socio-economic and cultural lifeworlds, have produced not only disproportionately high levels of socio-economic disadvantage, but also particular discriminatory environments that render movement along the housing continuum beyond the realm of realistic for many, and/or at odds with their aspirations for secure, affordable housing tenure. As the above discussion highlights, the private rental market is inherently economically discriminating and unstable. It always selects away from large, fluid and economically disadvantaged households (common characteristics of many Aboriginal households). Indigenous peoples also often report experiencing racial discrimination prior to the submission of an application. Few participants described homeownership as a realistic or attractive alternative. Unsurprisingly then, aspirational mobility on the housing continuum for many participants in the present study, and in another Western Australian housing study that examined Indigenous housing careers (Birdsall-Jones and Corunna, 2008), quite logically work in the opposite direction to that proposed by the State. As the following participant explained, public housing is often the ultimate destination on the continuum, with the private market considered a sometimes-necessary ‘stop’ until public housing can be secured:

“The dialogue between the culture of our people and the culture of the government I think is very vital … We should have someone in the machine room working with the government to try to bring in those changes that will affect our people on the ground, rather than just getting things thrown at us.” Male Aboriginal Research Participant No. 1 In a two-day workshop run as one of the final components of the collaborative research project, local Aboriginal leaders joined together with government and non-government stakeholders to develop a Housing Action Plan that would chart a pathway to addressing the many challenges identified by the study. 12 key recommendations emerged. These ranged from addressing stressor points and barriers at each point of the housing continuum, to improving access to statistical data about Aboriginal housing outcomes, to developing industry partnerships for increasing housing supply, to better avenues for disseminating information within the Aboriginal community about their housing rights and options. However, the chief recommendation that underpinned all others related to ensuring that local Aboriginal were positioned as “key advocates, advisors, and deliverers of housing services in Geraldton” (MAOA, 2012: 18). Participants identified a concrete set of steps for exactly how a local Aboriginal Housing Leadership Network could effectively engage with existing institutions responsible for housing policy and provision at the State and local levels. This, we would argue, is the work of just and inclusive city formation. To date, however, a combination of tempered political will, complexities in local governance structures, and resourcing challenges, have constrained progress toward these objectives. 8. Conclusion Rights-to-housing are a critical component of the right-to-the-city. In Marxian visions of the city, these rights are determined by a spatially-deterministic user-pay logic (e.g. Harvey, 2008). While there is now a well developed literature regarding how housing policy and broader neo-liberal processes of displacement operate together in postindustrial nations, few attempts have been made to locate Indigenous peoples within these discourses. This paper begins to draw the connections, arguing that a particular precarity sets Indigenous peoples apart from other disenfranchised groups struggling for their rights-tothe-city in the face of the increasing commodification of urban space. This particularity relates to a unique interweaving of both neo-liberal political and policy agendas that direct broader processes of urban formation, and the vestiges of colonial ideologies that historically attempted to firstly eliminate, and later limit and contain, Indigenous presence in urban areas. This coupling of historical dispossessing and contemporary displacing forces was particularly evident in three key dynamics observed in Geraldton, and supported by the findings of other Australian studies. The first was intersecting socio-economic and socio-cultural discriminatory forces that produced significant barriers to private rental accommodation for the participants in the study. The barriers were almost never exclusively economic: they were the product of historical processes of colonial dispossession and displacement, a neo-liberal political economy, and racial discrimination. The second manifestation related to deeply held concerns amongst participants about the shortage, and apparent retreat of the state in respect of, the supply of public housing. This was problematic not only because Indigenous people are disproportionately represented amongst the most socioeconomically disadvantaged citizens who rely on such housing (in large part due to intergenerational marginalisation produced by colonisation), but also because experiences of racial discrimination create additional barriers to accessing alternative forms of tenure. Finally, the study highlighted the intersecting of displacement and dispossession in the concerns of participants about State strategies to relocate public

“… the [State] process of getting a house is that long you have probably gone through about two or three private rentals before you can get a [State] house”. Male Aboriginal Participant No. 6 Within this context, the finding that Indigenous households would purposefully minimise their income to maintain eligibility is perfectly rational. Clearly, the official policy position that public housing should be a temporary or medium-term tenure in times of need was not consistent with the view of many local Indigenous people. For participants in this study, genuine partnership with local Aboriginal people in housing policy and practice was described as a critical precondition for a fuller realisation of their rights-to-the-city. The following quotes from focus group participants exemplify this sentiment: “I think we are looked on as a problem a lot of the time but we are the solution as well”. 175

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housing in dispersed arrangements and/or to the fringes of the city. The latter is particularly reminiscent of past policies that sought to contain growing urban Indigenous populations in fringe settlements on the outskirts of growing cities and towns, and exclude them from access to many of the benefits of urban living that other citizens readily enjoyed. In Geraldton, as in other Australian cities, these dynamics led to high levels of anxiety, dispute and frustration with the State as a landlord, and yet, public housing remains the preferred tenure arrangement for many local Indigenous people. That Indigenous public housing tenants would endure these disputes, frustrations and anxieties, continue to advocate for improved affordable housing arrangements, and even forgo employment opportunities in order to remain eligible for public housing, is telling. It is indicative of how deeply difficult and/ or undesirable it is for many urban Indigenous households to engage with the private housing market, and of how much they value security of tenure. It is also indicative of their enduring resolve in the struggle for their rights-to-the-city. In positioning the geographies of urban Indigenous housing within the right-to-the-city framework, this paper delineates the experiences of Australian Indigenous peoples as a distinct group of ‘right-bearers’ in their struggles to secure affordable and stable housing tenure. It draws attention to a particular Indigenous precarity borne out of disproportionately high rates of historically-driven dependence on more volatile, discriminatory, and ‘moveable’ forms of housing tenure. These observations, while not universally representative (or indeed panoptic), provide important insights regarding how neo-liberal political economies that drive the increasing commodification of urban land and housing have shaped urban Indigeneity in situ. Acknowledgements Funding for the research project was provided by Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), and the City of Greater Geraldton. The authors are indebted to the Midwest Aboriginal Organisations Alliance (MAOA) and particularly the MAOA Housing Project Reference group for their invaluable guidance, input and partnership in this project. We are also grateful to our colleagues Paul Maginn and Clare Mouat for their helpful feedback on an earlier draft and the two anonymous referees whose thoughtful feedback strengthened the paper considerably. References Aalbers, M., Gibb, K., 2014. Housing and the right to the city: introduction to the special issue. Int. J. Hous. Policy 14, 207–213. Alexander, I., Yiftachel, O., 1997. Sacred site or sacred cow? The frontier of urban racial struggle in Australia. Prog. Plan. 47, 275–290. Arena, J., 2013. Foundations, nonprofits, and the fate of public housing: a critique of the Right to the City Alliance’s “We Call These Projects Home” report. Cities 35, 379–383. Arthurson, K., Darcy, M., 2015. The historical construction of ‘the public housing problem' and deconcentration policies. In: Dufty-Jones, R., Rogers, D. (Eds.), Housing in 21st-century Australia: People, Practices and Policies. Routledge, New York. Beer, A., Tually, S., 2011. The drivers of regional housing markets in Australia: evidence and implications for future growth. In: Regional Studies Association Annual International Conference. Newcastle University, UK. Biddle, N., 2009. Location and Segregation: The Distribution of the Indigenous Population across Australia's Urban Centres. CAEPR Working Paper No. 53. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University. Birdsall-Jones, C., Corunna, V., 2008. The Housing Careers of Indigenous Urban Households. AHURI Final Report No. 112 Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. Blomley, N., 2004. Unsettling the City: Urban Land and the Politics of Property. Taylor and Francis, Hoboken. Brough, M., Bond, C., Hunt, J., Jenkins, D., Shannon, C., Schubert, L., 2006. Social capital meets identity: aboriginality in an urban setting. Austr. Sociol. Assoc. 42, 396–411. Byrne, D., 2003. Nervous landscapes: race and space in Australia. J. Soc. Archaeol. 3, 169–193. Carter, J., Hollinsworth, D., 2009. Segregation and protectionism: institutionalised views of Aboriginal rurality. J. Rural Stud. 25, 414–424. Cassells, R., Duncan, A., Gao, G., James, A., Leong, K., Markhanen, S., Rowley, S., 2014.

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