This report investigates racism in Victoria’s rental housing system and how it affects the health and wellbeing of renters from culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The study documents racism at every stage of the rental journey: searching, applying, living in and exiting a tenancy. Experiences include being denied housing or steered away from certain areas.

Over the past two decades, Australian planning policies have supported largely unregulated land speculation and gentrification in relatively well served inner and middle suburbs, leading to displacement of low and moderate income households and growing spatial inequalities. The current Victorian state government signalled a new direction by ‘refreshing’ the third metropolitan strategy in as many...