There is a growing body of research examining older people’s housing experiences. Work framed from a consumption perspective has investigated older people’s housing aspirations and preferences, and satisfaction with available housing options, while work framed by concepts of home and embodiment has explored how meanings and practices of home shift in the course of ageing as bodily capacities change and home becomes bound up with the giving and receipt of care. A critical gap exists at the intersection of these two domains of research. While resident satisfaction with housing governance has been a feature of some consumer research, the impact of governance processes on practices and meanings of home remains under considered. In this paper I begin to point to the structuring role that housing governance can play in the making of home in ageing, both contributing to and diminishing senses of home. Housing governance is fundamentally connected to tenure and type of housing, with different tenure forms and housing typologies being associated with different forms of management practice. I begin to point to these connections through a case study examining staff – resident relations in a small affordable housing community in north-west Sydney that was developed by a national aged care provider through the National Rental Affordability Scheme. I explore management processes and staff – resident relations as important components of the housing context and highlight some ways that these relations inter-connect with residents’ senses and practices of home: in this community by undermining residents’ senses of autonomy and security. The embeddedness of these relations in broader discourses of active ageing, and the economic priorities associated with this discourse, are a focus of the concluding discussion.