Here we are looking at social housing in Europe. Social housing is a type of public housing or affordable housing. Social housing key function is to provide accommodations that are affordable to people with low incomes. This in turn lowers the amount of rent owed by each tenant a month that is usually regulated by laws that are enforced. In Europe affordable housing is largely managed by nonprofit housing associations with very few private builders are involved. It does differ from country to country but mostly there social housing program is much more effective than the one we have here in the United States. Developers in the Netherlands and U.K. for example always have direct access to a large amount of financial resources. In the Netherlands there is a loan guarantee program that is funded by builders that allows them to borrow money from banks at extremely low rates, along with this there is a minimal amount of paperwork. The other reason is that both of these countries have vast amount of size and strength. Some housing developers own anywhere between 50,000 to 70,000 units, while others that are considered ‘smaller’ control around 20,000 units. An example of this great system is in a city called Tillburg in the Netherlands, which is the nation’s seventh largest city. Fifty one percent of the population is social housing. One more of the popular cities would be London, where an average of thirty percent of the population live in government housing. Another positive point is that there isn’t just a neighborhood of social housing. The units are mixed in all together not creating a line of on the market houses and social housing. Therefore it all blends together and the houses that are social housing look as if they were to be put on the market. A program that has come into place to contribute to the U.K.s housing system that is informative, rigorous, and reliable is BSHF. They make their research available to politicians and policy-makers, as well as to housing practitioners and other researchers. In 2009 they published a comprehensive review called The Future of Housing. It highlighted the eight key areas that need attention. These included house price volatility and increasing the range of housing providers in order to combat undersupply and increase the quality and variety of housing. (BSHF)Europe does a great job at putting the needs of housing first to everyone, no matter what social class or where you come from. There are problems that come along the way but the importance of everyone to have a roof over their head seems to always make the negative aspects disappear.
Works Cited
http://www.bshf.org/ukhpp/?lang=00
http://www.shelterforce.com/online/issues/133/europe.html
These are all images of social housing projects in Europe…discuss (both the images and the history, execution and success of such projects)…
Uncharted 