The Dynamics of Public Housing Tenure in Australia

The analysis in this paper presents evidence on the behaviour of tenants in public housing in Australia. Using a unique administrative dataset for West Australia, we identify the nature of spells in public housing and the determinants of the length of those spells. Our results indicate that lone parents and single individuals experience longer spells in public housing compared with couple households. We find that an increase in the market rent of a property in the order of $100 per month reduces the hazard out of public housing by between 17 per cent (lone parents) and 10 per cent (couples).