‘Shelter is a Dignity’: Rental Racism, Stress and Housing (In)justice

ABSTRACT Australia's private rental sector is in crisis, and culturally and racially minoritised renters face compounded harms through both covert and everyday direct forms of rental racism. Drawing on five community‐based focus groups in Melbourne ( n = 37), the paper explores how racism manifests across the rental pathway and how it structures the relationship between housing security and stress from a sociolegal perspective that examines access, occupancy and exit. Findings show rental racism operating as (1) access injustice through gatekeeping, and everyday racism; (2) occupancy injustice through selective enforcement and surveillance that constrains renter autonomy in everyday landlord, agent, neighbour and institutional interactions; and (3) exit injustice through displacement and the breaking of community. Participants described culturally compelled coping via problem‐focused, emotion‐focused and meaning‐focused strategies, while also articulating rights‐based demands that position ‘shelter’ as dignity among calls for reforms that redistribute power toward tenants and communities. By reading rental racism as a sociolegal process, the paper connects daily encounters to legal infrastructure and structural racism, and identifies regulatory and structural reforms required to close the gap between formal and lived rental rights.