Mixed tenure communities and the effects on neighbourhood reputation and stigma: Residents’ experiences from within

• We investigate if mixed housing tenure policies improve neighbourhood reputations.
• We examine three neighbourhoods that had extensive changes to housing tenure mix.
• Poor neighbourhood reputations will affect residents’ social inclusion.
• Residents associate private rental tenure with neighbourhood stigma.

The research reported here investigated the question of whether implementing mixed housing tenure policies has positive effects in terms of revising negative neighbourhood reputations. Neighbourhood reputation is conceptualised as a key factor that impacts on whether residents’ are socially included, as studies have suggested that it may affect residents’ health, educational horizons, personal ambitions and pride and feelings of exclusion from mainstream society. The current study encompassed three Australian case study neighbourhoods that had undergone extensive changes to tenure mix through neighbourhood renewal. Data collection involved a survey and in-depth interviews to increase understandings of residents’ comparative perspectives about the impacts of mixed tenure on the reputations of their neighbourhood (across different tenure groups). A key finding was that different scales of stigma existed. The broader neighbourhood reputations appeared to have improved but internally an unexpected finding was that residents associated private rental tenure with neighbourhood stigma.