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Over the past two decades, urban housing research in poorer countries has drawn attention to the importance and significance of rental housing. Increasingly, this is also being recognised by international development agencies such as the World Bank and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). However, the housing policies of national governments have been resilient to change–the conferring of ownership rights is preferred to attempts at fostering a range of tenure options. Drawing upon primary research in Surat, the second largest city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, this paper argues that this is in part the result of complex economic, social and political processes embedded in the relations of production, exchange and consumption of rental housing, which in turn raises questions as to how best poorer landlords are to be supported.