By 2008, ownership transfers of former council housing had been proceeding for 20 years. Since 1997, the process has encompassed many larger urban local authorities, with housing departments which could have been fairly characterised as monolithic, producer-oriented bureaucracies. Drawing on new...

Social rental housing stands in marked contrast to other social policy areas in Ireland in that it was initiated early in comparison to other European countries, was both financed and managed by the state and up until recently had only a marginal input from the non-profit sector. Although now...

This paper explores the impact of housing reforms on public rented housing in Eastern Europe, using Latvia and Ukraine as case studies. The focus on public housing is important, since in both countries municipalities and state institutions are the major social landlords. Rent structures are not...

The Blair government is implementing an ambitious agenda for the reform of the access, pricing and subsidy of social housing in England. This paper argues on the basis of available evaluation evidence that we should expect a muted response from consumers to the incentives created by these...

The transformation of Swiss social housing policy provides a rich case study for researchers interested the role of unique state structures and dynamic welfare regimes and their influence on social policy. Housing policy is rarely theorised from this perspective and this paper provides both...

The social rented housing sector in Ireland comprises just 10 per cent of the national stock and most of this is managed by local authorities. This sector is highly residualized, with eight out of ten tenants being welfare-dependent and many estates being considered problem estates. This article...

The size of the Dutch social housing sector, with a 32 per cent share of the housing stock, has prompted concerns over the 'level playing field' of competition between social and commercial housing providers. In 2007, this concern culminated in a complaint from the Dutch Association of...

The theme of this paper centres on the divergence and convergence of housing policy in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as reflected in the development of the private rented sector (PRS) in both jurisdictions. Using a historical comparative analysis of key indicators, this paper...

A step change has taken place in allocations policy in England with the recent adoption of choice-based letting (CBL). This centres on a customer-oriented approach with households responding to adverts. It requires the customer to indicate preferences based on social housing market information...

By some definitions, social housing, social housing tenants are necessarily socially excluded. In other terms, in 2000, social housing tenants were at greater risk of being socially excluded than owner occupiers and private renters on measures of income, employment, education, health, and...