The Theory and Practice of Housing Sector Development for Developing Countries, 1950-99

In terms of welfare, development, and overall distributional impact, the study of whole sector housing development is more significant than attention to parts of a housing system. Housing policy development is increasingly taking the more comprehensive approach. The first phases of international housing policy, 1972-83, represented in sites and services (and related in situ slum upgrading) projects, could never become completely effective. These approaches had only fragmentary relationships to general land policies, to the development of housing finance systems, and to the broader economic, social and institutional conditions for enhancing the qualities and supplies of housing. In due time the theoretical and practical limitations became apparent and various international aid agencies, including the World Bank, adopted broader, more sophisticated thinking in housing, leading to a quest for whole sector housing development. But in the late 1990s, within managerial reforms in the World Bank, the specialist housing section was disbanded and the staff dispersed to other sections. This paper provides an historical explanation for the change, along with critical commentaries on the potential dilemmas with the modern, more comprehensive approaches. It is argued that policy and research agendas should be more evidently based upon understanding of the developmental dialectic between the economic, the social and the political. The developmental welfare of such a dialectic has authority and legitimacy from several Nobel prize winners in the 1990s. This paper reflects upon the relevance of their theoretical contributions.     

欧洲住房金融改革对中国的借鉴意义

自从1960与1970年代以来,更多的欧洲国家放松了它们的住宅政策。我们注意到从公共融资向私人融资的转变、从社会住宅向商业住宅的转变、从住房建设补贴向住房人头补贴的转变、从管制租金向市值租金的转变、以及从租赁房向自有房的转变。大部分这些转变都可以统称为＂私有化＂以及＂自由化＂这些定义不明的词语。然而,欧盟大部分国家的住宅金融体系仍然复杂而不合理,需要更多的住宅金融改革。我们将详述一种住宅金融改革的核心内容,包括如下几点：住房建设补贴、租户的住房人头补贴、自有房的税收优惠、房屋租赁政策、以及住宅联盟的角色。通过这种分析,我们勾画出欧盟国家住宅金融深入改革的轮廓。在不久的将来,中国也会考虑相似的住宅金融改革。     

中国城市住房改革:回顾与展望

文章回顾中国城市住房改革在过去20年的发展历程，特别是国务院1998年23号文件发布后整个住房体制从以往的福利住房向住房市场转化的过程。通过重点讨论新住房体制的两个主要方面．住房金融与住房市场，本文试图揭示当前住房体制的不足之处，并为政府决策者提出进一步住房改革的政策建议。     

The Sudden Rediscovery of Housing Supply as a Key Policy Challenge

Housing supply was suddenly rediscovered as a major challenge for English housing policy in the early 2000s, after nearly three decades of neglect. There does appear to be a problem of inadequate and unresponsive housing supply in England, by international or historical standards. Although shortcomings of the house building industry and limited public investment play a part, the most important factor explaining England's housing supply problem is the operation of the land-use planning system. Policies, procedures and incentives are all implicated. The most important impact is a long-term real rise in the price of housing, differentiated by region, which is damaging both economically and socially, although there are some compensating benefits in terms of the environment. The Barker Inquiry has proposed a radical supply agenda, which has been substantially accepted by the present government. This proposes that planning targets should be geared to affordability, with more land released and market-contingent mechanisms, more social housing and supporting infrastructure investment. There is room for debate about the magnitudes involved, the role for more proactive approaches to development and the best fiscal mechanisms and incentives. However, given the fraught political economy of housing and planning in the pressured regions, there is considerable doubt as to whether these measures will be implemented on the requisite scale.     

Subtenures and Housing Outcomes for Low Income Renters in New York City

New York has devised a variety of policy approaches to improve the housing status of low‐income households, including public housing, publicly subsidized private housing, rent vouchers, welfare shelter allowances, rent regulation, and tax incentives to landlords. Little systematic attention has been paid to how these various subtenures compare when judged by the housing outcomes they produce for low‐income households in the city. Using data from the 1996 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, this article compares New York City’s rental subtenures in terms of the following outcomes: housing quality, crowding, affordability, residential mobility/stability, and various indicators of neighborhood quality. Adjusting for differences in household and housing stock characteristics, we find that the tenant‐based Section 8 program seems to produce the best set of overall outcomes for low‐income renters in the city.     

Housing allowances: still struggling to make ends meet

Housing allowances aim at providing adequate and affordable housing. A theoretical discussion and literature review show why it is challenging for housing allowances to actually shield households from financial hardship. Using National French Housing Survey data, an original application with a probit model with a double sample selection (being a tenant, and being eligible for means-tested allowances) follows. Estimation results show that housing allowances help to cope with some life events but that otherwise their recipients remain more exposed to housing financial hardship than their counterparts do. The gap between recipients and non-recipients is larger for the households with children than for those without despite the goal of horizontal equity. A nonlinear decomposition shows that the difference in probability between recipients and non-recipients is mostly explained by the endowment of characteristics in 2001 and by the return to risk in 2013.     

The Planning System and the Provision of Affordable Housing in Rural Britain: A Comparison of the Scottish and English Experience

This paper compares recent experience in the use of the planning system to facilitate the provision of affordable housing in rural areas of Scotland and England. Following an introduction summarising key issues arising from the relevant literature, the paper first sets out the scale of need for rural affordable housing in the two countries and then summarises the differing planning policy frameworks. Scale of delivery is then addressed and an attempt is made to establish the extent to which differences in performance reflect variations in policy, delivery mechanisms or differing housing markets. The hypothesis is advanced that Scotland, although a more rural country, has made less use of planning policy to tackle issues relating to the need for rural social housing. In both countries scale of provision has lagged behind perceived need and a major reason for this would appear to be the tensions in planning policy between environmental and social sustainability objectives, with the scales so far weighted towards the environmental rather than the social imperative.     

Moving House,Creating Home: Exploring Residential Mobility

This paper begins with a review of the residential mobility literature that arose out of housing and planning policy aimed at decreasing the negative effects of urban transience. The literature identified the range of factors influencing residential mobility, but Rossi's (1955) claim that mobility was a 'natural' outcome of life stage changes became the basis for the majority of this work. Most of this literature arose out of quantitative research approaches but writers drew attention to the inability of these approaches to capture the increasing complexity of family life and residential mobility. Drawing on data from the Christchurch, New Zealand, house and home study, this study argues that the qualitative ethnographic method used provides a more holistic approach to, and understanding of, the events and issues which influence household mobility over time. Within this context, the paper presents excerpts from interview data framed as ontological narratives and related stories embedded in social and economic contexts. Some of the themes identified are those of identity, home and place attachment, change and social differentiation, and the impact of gender relations on mobility decisions and experiences. These findings, like those in previous literature, are relevant to housing and planning policy making given the increasing diversity of residential developments and issues of access to social, financial and environmental resources. Understanding how individuals and families establish relationships between themselves and the places in which they live is important given increasingly divided and differentiated experiences of contemporary urban life.     

The Concept of Subjective Well-being in Housing Research

The aim of this article is to review the ways in which subjective well-being has been conceptualized within housing research, with a view to evaluating the use of the concept, the insights it has generated, the problems that have been experienced and the possible range of lessons that might be taken forward. The article begins with an analysis of the reasons why subjective well-being has become popular as a conceptual tool in many fields. The article continues with a discussion of the range of definitions that appear in the literature which leads into discussions of the research techniques and methodologies that have been used in empirical research. Empirical studies which focussed on the impact of physical housing conditions and tenure on subjective well-being are reviewed in order to evaluate what is known about the impact of housing on both personal and collective subjective well-being. This review highlights issues of status, reference groups and adaptation that are important insights from the subjective well-being approach that should set the agenda for further research in this area. The conclusion is that the relationship between housing and subjective well-being is a complex one that repays further study in order to understand the rich texture of the role of housing in people’s lives. The article concludes with suggestions for both conceptual and methodological approaches and the focus of future research.     

Power,Discursive Space and Institutional Practices in the Construction of Housing Problems

A constructionist approach to the study of social problems and housing policy provides a theoretically informed means of analysing the ways in which housing policy is formulated and implemented. Yet despite a strong commitment by housing researchers to policy relevance, constructionist studies of how specific social problems are generated and deployed have so far made only a limited impact on housing research. The paper addresses this lacuna by first discussing important literature and the key conceptual issues in this field of study. This is followed by a discussion of two examples from recent UK housing policy (the shift in the 1980s from defining lone mothers as the victims of housing shortages to a morally questionable group subverting needs-based allocation policies and the re-emergence of anti-social behaviour as a problem on housing estates). The paper's conclusion is that the 'construction of problems' provides a rich source of new material as well as offering significant opportunities to develop a more critically informed housing research agenda.     

寻求社会公正与融合的可持续途径:荷兰社会住宅的发展与现状

作为世界上住房保障制度最为完善的国家之一,荷兰自20世纪初期以来长期重视社会住宅,即公有出租的保障性住房的规划和建设,将其作为解决城市住房问题、促进社会公正的主要方式,并根据社会经济背景的变化对其发展政策和策略进行合理的调整.与此同时,荷兰也已将社会住宅的规划建设作为解决社会问题,特别是克服不同收入阶层与种族间的居住空间隔离问题,促进社会融合的重要手段之一.本文将结合政策与实例分析对荷兰社会住宅发展进行具体探讨,以期对我国目前的保障性住房规划建设提供借鉴.     

Housing and the New Welfare State: Wobbly Pillar or Cornerstone?

This paper is concerned with the question of how to depict the housing-welfare state relationship, with special reference to the present period. It begins with a discussion of how housing can be seen as both the wobbly pillar under the welfare state and a cornerstone. The paper then examines two different perspectives, variously giving explanatory weight to economic and cultural factors. The first, derived from the work of Michael Harloe, provides an explanation of the tendency of social housing to move towards a residual role, but has nothing to say about the growing significance of housing markets and housing wealth in relation to the contemporary welfare state. The second, originated by Jim Kemeny, is based on international correlations of homeownership rates and levels of welfare state expenditure. It is argued that this approach has limited, and diminishing, relevance in the context of the early 21st century. The paper suggests that in the present period housing, especially the housing wealth of owner occupiers, provides governments with the opportunity to pursue welfare restructuring. This idea is explored by reference to evidence from Great Britain, a country with a high level of homeownership and an active programme of public service reform.     

Policy Review: Reforming Private Housing Finance: Evaluating the Achievements of the Clinton Administration

The financial infrastructure of guarantees, insurance and regulation that underpins US housing markets is an important federal policy tool. Historically, housing policy in the US has relied much more heavily on regulating private market actors to achieve public goals, than it has on direct expenditures. But the commonalities between the US and restructured welfare states such as the UK and Canada have become more striking in recent decades. Similar dilemmas face policy makers in many settings: if homeownership is to be the centerpiece of housing policy, how do we ensure it is affordable and sustainable for those once served by a larger social housing sector? If direct expenditures are to be cut back, with what do we replace them? The story of the Clinton administration's efforts to reform the US financial infrastructure illustrates how these dilemmas have been addressed (although obviously not resolved) in a specific instance.     

Housing ownership and housing wealth: new evidence in transitional China

Ever since housing was transformed from the most important welfare benefit to the most valuable form of private property through radical housing reform in 1998, housing allocation mechanisms in China have been characterized by the coexistence of market logic and socialist legacy. Thus, the Chinese housing system exhibits a transitional nature as the country moves away from a socialist housing system towards a privatized housing system. Using the 2011 Chinese Household Finance Survey, we not only examine these changes in private ownership of housing, but also give an updated evaluation of the privatization process with new empirical evidence. We develop a conceptual framework and an empirical analysis to shed light on distinct housing inequality patterns in transitional urban China. Our results show that both socioeconomic characteristics and socialist institutions contribute to housing inequality, but they follow different paths in the reform and have different impacts on housing inequality.     

Social Housing Versus Housing Allowances: Choosing Between Two Forms of Housing Subsidy at the Local Level

Analysis of the policy choice between social housing and housing allowances has been obscured by the older housing policy debate between proponents of supply subsidies and proponents of demand subsidies. Social housing uses capital grants both to reduce monthly housing costs to below-market rates and to take existing or newly constructed housing out of the market, so that ownership is nonprofit and use is allocated according to need rather than ability to pay. Housing allowances, on the other hand, enable poor tenants to pay market rents for housing. During the past 15 years, even as housing allowances became the dominant mode of Federal assistance, social housing programs grew at the local level. Comparison of model social housing and housing allowance programs by the number of people helped over time, effects on economic integration, and program stability suggests that the choice between these programs depends primarily on alternative expectations for the future. The most active local constituencies favoring housing programs for low-income people have pessimistic expectations about the national economy and the social safety net, as well as professional interests that are likely to favor social housing programs more than housing allowances.     

Housing Stock Transfer in Glasgow—the First Five Years: A Study of Policy Implementation

In 2003 the City of Glasgow saw the largest housing stock transfer in the UK, involving around 80 000 dwellings. Since then, the implementation of the stock transfer policy has been heavily criticised. This paper uses a framework developed from implementation studies to analyse why this policy has been susceptible to difficulties and to reflect upon the important elements of a revised analytical framework. The paper finds that the study of policy implementation must contain an appreciation of the effects of having multiple policy objectives, multiple layers of governance and multiple actors involved in policy delivery. Additional elements of a policy implementation framework are: the specification of the stages of implementation; consideration of interactions between policy objectives; the need for government to oversee and ensure the effective management of policy networks; and finally, consideration of the effects of competing political interests and perspectives.     

Young People,Homeownership and Future Welfare

Homeownership has become a ‘normalised’ tenure of choice in many advanced economies, with housing playing a pivotal role in shifts from collective to asset-based welfare. Young people are, however, increasingly being excluded from accessing the housing ladder. Many are remaining in the parental home for longer, and even when ready to ‘fly the nest’ face significant challenges in accessing mortgage finance. This under-30 age group has become ‘generation rent’. As this policy review emphasises, this key public-policy issue has created a source of inter-generational conflict between ‘housing poor’ young people and their ‘housing rich’ elders. To fully understand the complexities at play however, this paper argues that we need to look beyond the immediate housing-market issues and consider how housing policy interacts with broader social, economic and demographic shifts, and how it is intimately connected to debates about welfare. This is illustrated with reference to the UK, although these debates have international resonance.     

Housing aspirations and obsolescence: understanding the relationship

This paper aims to consider whether there is an incipient problem of housing obsolescence in the UK, and if so, what its main dimensions are. It first examines how obsolescence in housing might be understood, and identifies four relevant factors: the nature of the housing stock; the expectations of households and how they are changing; locational and housing market factors; and the role of housing and urban policy. Using this broad structure, obsolescence and the changing aspirations of households are examined in two ways: first by drawing on an eclectic literature about housing, policy and household behaviour; and second by using evidence from interviews with housing professionals in the north of England. The paper concludes that there are good grounds for thinking that the relationship between what the housing stock offers and aspirations is under increasing strain. There seems to be a significant gap opening up between the qualities provided by new and by older housing, challenging longstanding preferences. There is an important set of relationships between tenure and obsolescence, with home ownership defining what is considered normal throughout the housing system. The findings also challenge the prevalent view that neighbourhood conditions are the key to obsolescence, as there is evidence of suppressed obsolescence and doubt about the strengths of some local markets where demand is apparently high. There is consensus around the desirability of local housing systems offering a choice of sizes and dwelling types, which many older as well as new housing areas do not.

The housing and economic development debate revisited: economic significance of housing in developing countries

Should housing improvement be part of economic development strategies? Must housing improvement wait until high-economic growth is attained? How much priority should be given to housing in view of the limited resources in less-developed countries? What are housing benefits in economic development vis-à-vis other economic investments? These questions have generated heated debates, both in the literature on development problems and in planning and practice in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper draws on the accumulated body of knowledge resulting from past experiences in research and policy to revisit the earlier debates, survey the main lines of argument and reassess the economic potential of housing. It then attempts to generate broad policy considerations. The main contention of this paper is that in light of past and present evidence, the housing sector needs to be given serious consideration in economic growth strategies.     

Towards the More Effective Use of Housing Finance and Subsidy

The UK provides an important case study of both the potential for restructuring traditional housing finance systems and the outcome of such restructuring. During the period 1975–2000 the UK government undertook a piece-by-piece restructuring of housing finance. The major objectives of this restructuring included bringing public expenditure under control, ensuring that a high proportion of housing costs were paid by the direct beneficiaries and targeting available subsidy more directly on those in housing need. This agenda was supported by more general policies of liberalisation and privatisation, and particularly by the growth in asset values during the 1970s and 1980s and by macro-economic stabilisation during the 1990s. Based on the desktop analysis undertaken for the Evaluation of English Housing Policy Review this paper takes four specific policies and clarifies how political priorities and the economic environment came together to make policy change possible. It then evaluates the outcomes of these policies both in terms of their immediate goals and the more general objectives of housing policy. The incremental approach favoured by the government appears to have been successful in its own terms, but the result is far from a coherent and sustainable housing finance policy. The conclusions stress more general lessons some of which have implications for effective restructuring in other countries.