Abstract: In my time as a public housing resident I have participated in many resident-based activities such as community gardens and social events. I have also engaged with housing authorities on a variety of tenancy related matters. Through these ‘Tenant Participation’ activities I found myself attempting to encourage participation from other residents. These attempts to ‘encourage’ were frequently frustrated; my disappointment reaching a crescendo in 2007, as a diary entry at the time attests: I’m so over it! How do you organise with people who come and go, who take a role one week and drop it the next …who say they love an idea but run a mile if it involves any real responsibility? As I delved into the literature on tenant participation I realised that the problems I was experiencing were also playing out in a variety of other contexts – nationally and internationally. Reflecting on my experience and the contemporary literature on tenant participation, it seemed unfair that the ‘failure’ of tenant participation programs was often rationalised and attributed to residents. It is often all too easy to problematise those who opt out of participation as I had done, and as had been done to me as a public housing resident by others. It is much more difficult thing to step outside of taken-for-granted understandings of participation and undertake an assessment of the sort of engagement processes being used and subjectivities being produced.