Introduction

Abstract

Housing issues and policy problems are both universal and inherently specific to a given time and place. All countries, rich and poor, developed and developing, capitalist and socialist, are wrestling with their own housing problems and with the everyday mechanics of housing supply and regulation. The literature on housing systems and housing policy in different countries has expanded considerably in recent years. It has made an important contribution to the analysis and understanding of key issues relating to the origins and nature of state intervention in housing and to the interaction of specific social, political and economic forces. This literature has been central to the development of more critical perspectives on the nature of housing tenures and debates about convergence of housing systems. The most important initial contributions to this literature referred principally to the advanced industrialized economies of Western Europe and North America (Donnison, 1967; Duclaud-Williams, 1978; Headey, 1978; Kemeny, 1981; Donnison and Ungerson, 1982; Harloe, 1985; Bullock and Read, 1985; Ball, Harloe and Martens, 1988)