Abstract: The comprehensive renewal of public housing estates has been the focus of much policy and academic debate in recent years. As sites of intervention, they have captured the tensions at play between strategic intent and the experience of those most directly affected by its aims and goals. There has been a particular focus on the potential disjuncture between the politics and policy of renewal on the one hand, and the needs and expectations of the communities involved on the other. However, an ongoing narrative of affected households – impacted in different ways at different stages of the process – is less evident in those debates. This paper draws upon findings from the first stage of a ten year longitudinal study exploring what renewal means to, how it is interpreted by, and how it impacts on, a community undergoing change. The panel comprises almost 100 households living on, or who had previously lived on, the Bonnyrigg estate in Sydney’s west. As Australia’s first social housing Public Private Partnership (PPP), the renewal of Bonnyrigg is defined by considerable complexity. However over 18 stages and 13 years it will impact at the everyday level, in various ways, with the lives of residents. The paper concludes by considering how insight into this ‘translation’ of a complex PPP on the ground in residents lives can contribute to wider conceptual, policy and planning debates tied to urban renewal.