Meeting housing needs through the market: An assessment of housing policies and the supply/demand balance in France and Great Britain

In both Britain and France, for the last 15 years or so, housing policy has become more market‐orientated. This paper examines what this has meant for the balance between supply and demand and for progress in meeting housing needs. Current projections for how housing needs and the demand/supply balance will develop in the 1990s are also analysed. For each country, the determinants of housing demand, both demographic and economic, and the supply position in both the private and public sectors, are examined. Several common issues are identified: the existence of unmet housing needs, problems of indebtedness, the limits to the expansion of owner occupation, problems of social housing finance, and concerns about the decline of the private rented sector. There are also important differences between the two countries: housing output remains at a higher level in France than in Britain; deregulation of housing finance has gone further in Britain than in France; and in France there remains a greater recognition by government that housing is a national responsibility. But in both countries, the ‘marketisation’ of housing policy has meant that housing outcomes have become more dependent on factors external to the housing system.