Affordable Housing Governance And Finance

There is a large shortage of affordable housing across Europe. In high‐demand urban areas housing shortages lead to unaffordable prices for many target groups. This book explores innovations to support a sufficient supply of affordable and sustainable rental housing. Affordable housing is increasingly developed, financed and managed by a mix of market, state, third sector and community actors. Recent decades in large parts of the Western world have consecutively shown state-dominated, non-profit housing sectors, an increased role for market forces and the private sector, and the rise of initiatives by citizens and local communities. The variety of hybrid governance and finance arrangements is predicted to increase further, leading to new affordable housing delivery and management models. This book explores these innovations, with a focus on developments across Europe, and comparative chapters from the USA and Australia. The book presents new thinking in collaborative housing, co-production and accompanying finance mechanisms in order to support the quantity and the quality of affordable rental housing. Combining academic robustness with practical relevance, chapters are written by renowned housing researchers in collaboration with practitioners from the housing sector. The book not only presents, compares and contrasts affordable housing solutions, but also explores the transferability of innovations to other countries. The book is essential reading for researchers and professionals in housing, social policy, urban planning and finance.

In recent years, the financialization of housing has become a major challenge to many cities across the globe, not the least because it tends to favor the interests of global finance over the needs of residents. Based on three case studies in the city regions of Zurich, Birmingham and Lyon, the present investigation analyzes the interplay of housing governance and policies over the past 20 years against the backdrop of the financialization of housing.

In recent years, the financialization of housing has become a major challenge to many cities across the globe, not the least because it tends to favor the interests of global finance over the needs of residents. Based on three case studies in the city regions of Zurich, Birmingham and Lyon, the present investigation analyzes the interplay of housing governance and policies over the past 20 years against the backdrop of the financialization of housing.

The purpose of this guidebook is to give municipalities a detailed account of how to adopt an affordable housing strategy. The introduction reviews the types of affordable housing strategies, their benefits & strengths, and the principles on which advice in the guidebook is based. The remaining chapters cover the following steps in strategy development: preparation (including establishment of a task force, developing terms of reference, identifying available resources and potential problems & solutions), needs assessment, public participation (including consultation, communication, & information dissemination), formulation of action plans and integrating them into a strategy, implementation of the strategy, partnership development & implementation, and strategy evaluation & monitoring. Case study examples are provided throughout for illustration.

Despite the conventional wisdom that affordable housing, either in the form of homeownership or through access to rental units, has beneficial effects for households, society, and the economy more broadly, there is a noteworthy lack of empirical studies of housing development and construction companies or building societies that actively work to supply this asset class in the economy. There are several reasons for this condition, including the “thin market” for such business activities. This book offers a case study that includes two Swedish housing development companies that have targeted a market niche for affordable homes that few other companies and market actors are concerned with. One company is part of a major construction company conglomerate which produces prefabricated housing modules to better serve the low-end niche of the housing market. The other company is a municipality-owned housing development company that acts on the basis of market practices and rules but that also on policymakers’ stated ambition to provide affordable homes for the residents in the municipality, the largest municipality in a major Swedish metropolitan area. Taken together, the study of these two companies provides first-hand insights into how the production of affordable homes takes place in a real-world economy. The book is of relevance for a variety of readers, including graduate students, management scholars, policymakers, and management consultants.