Welfare Reform on the Web (February 2006): Social Housing - Overseas

Favoured owners, neglected tenants: privatisation of state owned housing in Hanoi

Hoai Anh Tran and E. Dalholm

Housing Studies, vol.20, 2005, p.897-929

Research analysed the impact of the privatisation of public housing on owners and tenants living in privatised or partly privatised apartment blocks in Hanoi. Paper concludes that privatisation helps to strengthen existing inequities between different social groups, in that it helps better-off government officials to move up the housing ladder and ignores poor households. Privatisation also increases inequalities between prosperous housing areas and poorer ones. Finally, the privatisation policy, which was presented to owners in terms of benefits and not in terms of responsibilities, has created serious problems in relation to the maintenance of the apartment blocks.

Non-profit housing influencing, leading and dominating the unitary rental market: three case studies

J. Kemeny, J. Kersloot and P. Thalmann

Housing Studies, vol.20, 2005, p.855-872

This study draws a distinction between “unitary rental markets”, in which ground rules enable competition between for-profit and non-profit housing providers and “integrated rental markets”, in which non-profit rental organisations are sufficiently developed and established to be able to compete with for-profit providers without invasive regulation or special protection. It then outlines a hypothetical development trajectory from unitary to integrated rental market. The next task is to consider the different roles that non-profit rental housing plays in unitary markets that are developing towards integrated markets. The study distinguishes between non-profit providers influencing, leading and dominating the market and considers the consequences of such differences. Finally, by way of illustration, the rental markets are examined in Switzerland (where non-profit providers weakly influence the market), Sweden (where they lead the market) and Netherlands (where they dominate the market).