Current projects include:

• The experience of being young and LGBTIQ issues and being homeless

The project raised awareness of the need for extra support for young homeless people who are LGBTIQ. Funded by the Commonwealth Government the study found that improved training for teachers, health and social workers, and for improved services and accommodation to cater more specifically for the range of needs for young LGBTIQ people was needed. While youth homelessness is a major problem, the situation is even more complex when young people are LGBTIQ and are facing being homeless.  Coordinated and integrated support services are lacking, so too is enough safe housing to accommodated these young people.

• The role of private rental brokerage in housing outcomes for vulnerable Australians

This research explores Australian private rental brokerage programs which provide assistance in securing and sustaining private rental tenancies for disadvantaged tenants. Funded by AHURI the study identified a diverse range of activities tailored to individuals and local circumstances, but lacking common terminology, measures and reporting, has made it difficult to assess the overall success of these programs beyond specific program outcomes.

• ‘I feel like my luck's going to run out soon’: Youth Citizenship and Housing Responses to Homelessness in South Australia

The role that Youth Housing Models (YHMs) play in supporting a young person’s experience of citizenship is complicated. On one hand the YHMs’ provide a crucial support system for young people who can no longer receive ongoing emotional, economic and habitual support from their families. In theory, the YHMs’ support provide a stepping stone to achieving societal goals of citizenship in terms of economic independence. On the other hand, even with the YHMs’ support the young person still faces significant structural barriers of increasing educational requirements, reduction in secure employment and a lack of affordable housing. Even more significant is the recognition and attention to empowering young people to have agency and the relevant skills sets they require to be able to negotiate the world that they live in. This study was funded by the ARC.

• Redeveloping urban docklands for high-density consumption living

In Australia, large-scale residentially driven waterfront redevelopments have taken on a new urgency and their development has increasingly become politically, socially and economically significant as urban populations have burgeoned and governments have sought ways to house, employ and ensure quality urban environments. My research examines the capacity of these projects to provide planning processes that can deliver equitable distributional outcomes in terms of environmentally and socially sustainable spaces of mixed housing tenure, amenity and quality urban design.

• Understanding the planning and practice of redeveloping disused docklands

The Port Adelaide inner harbor, like other waterfront developments nationally and internationally, reflects the bringing together of ideas, people, capital and strategies in reconfiguring the built form. This study examines the planning, processes and delivery of this waterfront redevelopment. The aim is to go beyond situating the redevelopment as a ‘model’ of success or failure, or the sole result of a neo-liberal urban regeneration project.