The Contribution of Housing Displacement to the Decline of the Boarding and Lodging Population in Adelaide, 1947-77

Abstract

This paper critically examines the assumption that the decline of boarding and lodging within the inner areas of large Australian cities is due principally to its displacement by 'gentrification'. A case study of the boarding and lodging sector shows that it has been affected by the same set of market and institutional pressures that have produced net losses in population and housing stock in the City of Adelaide. In addition, it appears that demand for boarding and lodging has been eroded by processes externalto the housing system. The readiness to attribute the decline of Adelaide's boarding and lodging accommodation purely to housing displacement has caused researchers to misjudge aspects of the restructuring of inner area population and housing resources, and led to misallocation. A GENERAL consensus is emerging in Australian urban studies that the large-scale reallocation of property in the inner areas of the nation's largest cities since the mid-196os has caused the extensive displacement of the most vulnerable housing groups in the community (Berry, 1977; Centre for Urban Research and Action, 1977; Department of Environment, Housing and Community Development, 1978; Kilmartin and Thorns, 1978; Sandercock, 1975). These groups mainly comprise poor residents-elderly pensioners, migrant and/or unskilled bluecollar workers and their families, and boarding house tenants-who have been relegated by the market to the city's cheapest housing, which is traditionally concentrated in inner areas. Most commentaries stress that the majority of these poor residents are the losers in a class struggle centring on the use of the inner city's housing stock, and that 'gentrification', a transitional process whereby the class composition of a residential neighbourhood changes from workingto middle-class, is the chief agent of displacement. Inner city areas over the last decade have been the focus of tremendous competition over land use which has caused the displacement of vulnerable housing classes . . . The concept of housing classes is particularly relevant to situations of market scarcity or high demand which have been characteristic of the inner suburban housing market in recent years. The demand shift towards inner suburban houses has produced new threats to the housing of certain housing classes, such as boarding house tenants and low income private tenants. These housing classes have incurred a great liability to the risk of housing displacement (Centre for Urban Research and Action, 1977, pp. 2-3). Interpretations of inner city change that stress competition and conflict between housing