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AbstractIn the wake of underinvestment in, and residualisation of, the social housing sector, housing policymakers in Australia are adopting a range of strategies to ration social housing and reduce the size and length of social housing waiting lists. A recent addition to these strategies are ‘diversionary products’ that seek to direct applicants towards the private rental sector where they are free to make ‘autonomous’ housing choices and work towards a purported pathway of housing independence. Drawing on research conducted in Queensland and New South Wales in Australia, and informed by conceptual analyses of diversion the criminal justice space, this paper interrogates the principles and practices of diversion deployed by social housing policymakers to understand what are people being diverted from, and where they are being diverted to? Where diversion from the criminal justice system is driven by imperatives to keep vulnerable populations ‘out of harm’s way’, the same discourses are discernible in the social housing sector alongside (neo) liberal discourses that privilege private market solutions to the shortage of social housing. Yet, foregrounding pathways to independence, autonomy and person-centred housing products has the effect of preventing otherwise needy applicants from applying for social housing; stretching out waiting times further; and directing vulnerable groups towards precarious and harmful private housing arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]