Affordable housing for all: policy implications of shrinking budgets

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Posted on: 9 November 2011
By: mackene
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Filed under: News

The European Housing Forum (EHF), co-chaired by RICS, organised a second lecture series in 2001 on the topic of affordable housing. The following presentations are available online:

Good housing for all: cities as frontrunners, or under pressure?

Heidrun Feigelfeld, lead expert of the Urbact II SUITE project, presented the recommendations of this project in terms of EU policy in the field of housing. The SUITE project, launched in January 2009 and ending in July 2011, aims to optimise a sustainable and affordable supply of housing and to assure social cohesion through social mix and sustainable housing. It focuses on the integration of the three pillars of sustainability in the field of housing: environmentally sound, economically viable and socially inclusive.

Housing policy, shaping or shadowing the market?

Professor Ian Cole from Sheffield Hallam University discussed whether public policy can shape housing market outcomes to achieve social and economic goals, or whether policy merely shadows the process of change and responds belatedly. Professor Cole’s paper has suggested that the ‘shaping’ mode of state interactions with the housing market tends to be provisional, time limited and partial.  In considering the balance between ‘shadowing’ and ‘shaping’, three developments seemed especially relevant in recent British housing policy: the shift from tenure-centred to market-centred policy approaches; the use of new forms of market intelligence to guide policy measures, and the assembly of more flexible forms of intervention, steering a course between direct provision, on one hand, and light-touch strategic steer, on the other.

Home owning or renting? The role of policy

This lecture discussed the role of policy in choosing living arrangements. Professor Marja Elsinga of the Delft University of Technology discussed the pros and cons of both owning and renting, as well as the influence policy measures have on the decision people make.

Tenure-neutral policy for stable housing markets

The final lecture, in which Vincent Gruis, Professor of Housing Management at the Technical University of Delft, addressed the implications for policy decisions of recent development in housing systems and markets that have led to significant challenges concerning the management of the European housing stock.

Read more online