Making a home in the private rental sector

With increasing proportions of households living in lightly regulated rental markets, long-term, there is an urgent need to examine the interconnections between tenancy regulation and private renters’ agency when making a home. Accordingly, this article asks: How do private renters, through their homemaking practices, exercise agency to overcome tenancy regulations that challenge the ways they make home? And how does tenancy regulation impact private renters’ agency? An analysis of interviews with 24 private renters living in Sydney, Australia, is used to answer these questions. For participants, meanings of home were informed by the belief that they were not homeowners and therefore, could not achieve a sense of ‘home’. Despite this, through their possessions, household relationships and their relationship with their landlord and/or property manager, participants created a sense of home within their rental property. This article argues that while the regulatory environment and structures of private rental tenure pose significant challenges and therefore change the meaning and importance of homemaking practices for private renters, renters strategically employ their (albeit limited) agency to challenge and resist these structural limitations to make a home.