Follow up interview

We are interested in the experiences of people who have had to move out of a private rental home when they did not really want to, and what this means for their everyday lives and communities.

Every conversation is different and we will follow your lead – there is no need to prepare anything in advance. That said, some of the themes we may explore together include:

• What happened around the move – what led up to you having to leave a rental home (for example, rent rises, the property being sold, an eviction notice, or other pressures).

• What the move was like for you and your household – including any stresses, worries, or unexpected positives.

• Rebuilding life after the move – how you have rebuilt (or built new) family, friendship, community and employment networks in your new location.

• Getting around and using services – how the move has changed your everyday travel, access to work and study, schools, shops, health care, community centres, and other services.

• The role of place – how living in an inner suburb, outer suburb, regional town or rural area has shaped your experience of moving and resettling.

• Identity and experience – how aspects of who you are (for example, culture, disability, family situation, income, caring responsibilities) have influenced your experience.

• Help and barriers – the kinds of supports, services or policies that have helped (or would have helped), and the barriers you have come up against.

• Looking ahead – how you think this move, and any future moves, might affect your work, housing and household wellbeing.

If you agree to take part, you will be invited to a one‑off interview of about 60 minutes.

• We can meet in person at a place that is convenient and comfortable for you (for example, a quiet café, community centre, campus meeting room), or online via Zoom or a similar platform – whichever you prefer.

• The conversation will feel more like a relaxed discussion than a formal interview. We will ask open‑ended questions and follow your lead; there are no right or wrong answers.

• Some questions may touch on difficult experiences (for example, eviction or financial stress). You can skip any question you do not wish to answer, and you can take a break or stop the interview at any time.

With your permission, we would like to audio‑record the interview. This is simply so that we can capture your words accurately. If you would prefer not to be recorded, that is absolutely fine – we will make brief notes and write them up after we have spoken.

Your participation is entirely voluntary.

• You can choose not to take part, or to withdraw from the project at any time and for any reason.

• If you decide to withdraw, there will be no negative consequences, and we will not use your interview data in our analysis or publications.

To thank you for your time, we are offering a $75 voucher for taking part in the interview.

• You will receive this voucher after you have completed the interview (whether in person or online) via your mobile phone.

• You must have an Australian mobile phone number to receive the voucher.

• We reserve the right not to provide a voucher where we reasonably believe a person is not eligible for the study or has misrepresented their situation in order to take part.

Unless you specifically ask to be identified, everything you share with us will be de‑identified.

• We will remove your name and any direct identifying details from our notes and transcripts.

• We may use unattributed quotes in project outputs – for example in conference papers, scholarly articles, reports for government and industry, submissions to inquiries, or media pieces – but nothing will be traceable back to you personally.

• If anything you share touches on topics you would prefer to keep “off the record”, we will generalise those details in any written outputs to make sure you remain unidentifiable.

Because we will sometimes talk about specific places (for example, suburbs, towns, regions) and the paths you travel, there is a small risk that someone who knows you very well could guess who you are. To manage that risk, we have put the following safeguards in place:

• If you tell us something that is highly identifiable and cannot easily be de‑identified or generalised, we will either come back to you to ask for permission to use it, or we will simply not use it at all.

• You will have the opportunity to review, edit, and veto the use of your transcript, or any part of it, before we draw on it in our publications.

• Only the members of the Rental Displacement project research team will have access to the audio recordings, transcripts and research notes.

• All materials will be stored in password‑protected, encrypted files on secure University of Melbourne servers for five years after the end of the project, after which they will be securely erased.

• If we engage a third party to transcribe interviews, they will only have temporary access to the relevant audio recording and will be bound by a confidentiality agreement.

Data collected in this research may also be used in future projects that are closely related to this study or in the same general area (for example, further work on rental displacement and housing). If that occurs, only the researchers on that project will have access to the data, and it will continue to be used in de‑identified form.

There is a lot we still do not know about what happens to renters after they are displaced – how they rebuild their lives, and how these moves change communities and places.

Policymakers, service providers and councils are making important decisions about housing, transport, and community services, but they currently have limited evidence about how forced or unwanted moves actually play out in everyday life, especially across different parts of Victoria.

By sharing your experience, you will help us:

• Build a clearer picture of how private rental displacement affects households, communities and regions.

• Understand what helps and what makes things harder when people are trying to resettle and rebuild after a move they did not want.

• Provide better information to governments, housing services, community organisations and advocacy groups so that policy, support and infrastructure are better aligned with renters’ realities.

It is unlikely that you will personally benefit from taking part in this research. However, your contribution will provide broader benefits by helping us to better understand the changing nature of home, work and community in the context of Australia’s private rental housing crisis.

We will share the main findings of the project on our project website and in public summaries. If you would like, we can also send you a copy of the key findings when they are available.

This project has received ethics clearance from the University of Melbourne and Monash University (project ID 2025-33729-70737-2).