This article aims to explain the effects of the recent economic and financial crisis on housing conditions and the ability of Portuguese families to access housing. It also intends to discuss how the crisis is reconfiguring the housing patterns, in terms of access to housing and changes in public policies, questioning the predominant mode of access to housing based on homeownership. This article also discusses the role of social housing in the Portuguese housing system and the changes and challenges in this sector coming from the economic and financial constraints of families and the state. This article is structured in three parts. The first is an overview of the Portuguese housing system and social housing in particular, highlighting the conditions and reasons that led to a reduced social housing stock and to the predominance of homeownership. The second part discusses the impact of the crisis on families and the state, trying to demonstrate how the constraints on both are translated into (1) worsening housing conditions, (2) a diversification of groups struggling to access housing in the private market and (3) a reduction of affordable housing, pressing the social housing sector. Finally, the third part is a reflection on the changes that the crisis has had in the orientation of housing policies and their instruments, arguing that the patterns of the Portuguese housing system are changing with emphasis on the need to diversify the housing supply to increasingly diverse groups in housing need.
About 12 per cent of households in Finland live in social rental housing. The Finnish system of social housing is now facing challenges. Finland has reached a situation where large numbers of social rental dwellings are free from regulation because the state housing loans have been paid off, while new production of such housing is unable to make up for this loss. Potentially this means a decrease in the social rental housing stock. Current housing policy discourse sees social housing more as a failed policy than a necessary welfare measure. Such developments can be related to a larger change in the Finnish housing regime. It has entered a phase of retrenchment, where the government withdraws from its previous commitment to housing provision in order to give more room to market forces. Retrenchment has led to the strengthening of one of the basic features of Finnish housing policy, its selectiveness.
The role of the social housing sector as part of the German housing system has changed fundamentally since 1950. Social housing in Germany followed a number of common trends and features to be observed in most countries in Europe: delegation to local government, a narrow focus on fragile populations and a reduction in the proportion of social housing. The specific reasons for this are discussed as relating to the German background. Against a background of more and more tense housing markets the paper argues for a revitalization of social housing in Germany without repeating the old mistakes.
Hungary stepped on a very specific path two years into the Global Financial Crisis and the recession in its wake, on which it replaced ‘traditional’ austerity programs with ‘unorthodox’ economic policy. This policy paradigm shift affected the emerging social housing policy in two respects. First, the mainstream approach to social problems related to worsening housing affordability (due to increased loan repayments and other cost items together with decreasing incomes) provided strong support for the middle class. Second, intervention toward low income households remained minimal, and served only to pacify political tensions. This dual approach characterized the policy of the government, and resulting shift in the social structure did not necessarily follow the direction policy makers intended. Programs aimed at the middle class were poorly targeted, and often helped the upper middle class the most, who again did not behave the way policy makers expected (which would have been increased consumption to stimulate economic growth). Programs aimed at low income groups rendered the social structure more rigid, decreased the chance of low income persons to escape from extreme poverty, and cemented the opportunity discrepancies between the rich and the poor. The most recent housing policy measures suggest that the mistakes committed in the 2000s will likely be repeated, and there are not measures in place which could correct their course.
This paper looks at housing strategy in a wider social and economic context and argues that a household’s (class) position in society depends on important life decisions, one of the most important of which is a person’s employment strategy and preparation for the period of retirement (pensions), which is related to housing decisions. The main context of these decisions is the welfare regime, but also a country’s economic structure (varieties of capitalism) and housing system (tax and subsidy elements of programmes). However, as the paper argues, these systems are also changing in relation to the macro effect of individual decisions.