This project aims to develop a rental vulnerability index and online mapping tool for Tenants Queensland. The index and tool are intended to help plan the delivery of tenant advice services by the Queensland Statewide Tenant Advice and Referral Service (QSTARS).
The project defines ‘rental vulnerability’ as the vulnerability of persons to problems that may make their rental housing unaffordable, insecure or inappropriate, and which therefore indicates a need for tenant advice. The first stage of the project involved defining and mapping key 'housing' and 'people' indicators that provide an insight into the nature of the rental housing sector in Queensland and the people that live in rental housing.
Housing indicators give an overview of the scale and location of rental housing, various market pressures such as affordability and rental stress, and tenures associated with disadvantage (social housing, residential services and manufactured homes).
People indicators show personal or household characteristics, conditions or circumstances, such as disability, unemployment and low education that may contribute to rental vulnerability. Also included are other measures important for tenancy advice service planning, including tenant households that speak languages other than English at home. All factors have been mapped at postcode level to match bond data made available through the open data portal by Residential Tenancy Authority (RTA) Queensland.
Project status
Complete
Related programs
Housing
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Tenants Queensland
Rental Vulnerability Index launched in Brisbane
28 June 2017
Devised by CFRC and launched on 17 May, the new Queensland Rental Vulnerability Index is a new tool for measuring and mapping problems in our rental housing system. ‘Rental vulnerability’ is defined here as the vulnerability of persons to problems that may make their rental housing unaffordable, insecure or inappropriate, and which – therefore – indicates a possible need for tenant advice. Commissioned by Tenants Queensland, and created by Dr Laurence Troy and Dr Chris Martin, the Index draws on 13 census and other indicators to create a single location-specific rental vulnerability score. Mapped for Queensland,  suggests that – at least in this setting – the well-known metropolitan trend towards ‘suburbanisation of disadvantage’ is now being echoed by a regionalisation of disadvantage. Since the model could be easily applied to other jurisdictions it is hoped that geographies of rental vulnerability will be exposed elsewhere in Australia in the near future.