All countries aim to improve housing conditions for their citizens but many have been forced by the financial crisis to reduce government expenditure. Social housing is at the crux of this tension. Policy-makers, practitioners and academics want to know how other systems work and are looking for something written in clear English, where there is a depth of understanding of the literature in other languages and direct contributions from country experts across the continent. Social Housing in Europe combines a comparative overview of European social housing written by scholars with in-depth chapters written by international housing experts. The countries covered include Austria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands and Sweden, with a further chapter devoted to CEE countries other than Hungary. The book provides an up-to-date international comparison of social housing policy and practice. It offers an analysis of how the social housing system currently works in each country, supported by relevant statistics. It identifies European trends in the sector, and opportunities for innovation and improvement. These country-specific chapters are accompanied by topical thematic chapters dealing with subjects such as the role of social housing in urban regeneration, the privatisation of social housing, financing models, and the impact of European Union state aid regulations on the definitions and financing of social housing.

Providing sufficient affordable living space-especially in European conglomerations-is one of the great challenges of the future, requiring new solutions. In the face of demographic change, changing family structures, and a growing environmental awareness, completely new residential forms have evolved in Europe: cross-generational residences, residential cooperatives, housing projects for senior citizens, ecological estates, integrative residences, or district neighborhoods. The significance of communal living, in particular, will change in light of social traditions and framework conditions such as housing policy and the housing market. This book provides an insight into communal living in eleven European countries-Austria, the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Germany-and presents a range of exemplary residential projects with their architectural and social concepts, as well as their different funding schemes.

Across Europe, the number of co-housing initiatives is growing, and they are increasingly receiving attention from administrators and professionals who hold high expectations for urban liveability. Is co-housing a marginal idealist phenomenon, or the urban middle class’ answer to the current housing crisis? And has the development of theoretical insight and research kept up with the actual expansion of co-housing as a practice? These questions were raised during the first European conference on co-housing research, which took place in Tours, France, in March 2012. Both the conference and this book aim to move beyond case-studies, and to look more particularly at the implications and wider perspective of the current co-housing trend. Using the specific vocabulary of different disciplines and geographic regions, the contributions to this book analyse the underlying thinking behind, and the expectations projected on, diverse models of collaborative housing. The authors are aware of the qualities of contemporary co-housing, but they go beyond advocacy to investigate the conditions under which co-housing can be successful as a strategy for housing provision; can offer solutions for sustainable urban development; or indeed can contribute to involuntary or intentional gentrification. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Research and Practice.

This book examines the large-scale social housing programs begun in Eastern and Central Europe after 2000 as an attempt to mitigate the inequality and declining standards of living that took hold in the region after the wave of privatizations that accompanied the political turn of the 1990s. It provides both case studies and theoretical frameworks for evaluating their successes and failures.