Home ownership and the Nordic housing policies in the 'Retrenchment phase"

Home ownership and the Nordic housing policies in the 'Retrenchment phase"

Ruonavaara, H.

2008-11-13

Though Nordic countries (=Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway & Sweden) are often considered to represent a shared Scandinavian model of welfare, their welfare arrangements differ from each other in a number of specific policy fields, not least in housing policy. There is no one Nordic housing regime, though arguably there are shared features. Recently the historical development of Nordic housing policies has been analysed in a collaborative comparative study. In this paper the findings of this study concerning the nature of national housing policies are presented and the different policies are compared on two dimensions: the scope of policy and its institutional basis. The central institution concerning housing provision is housing tenure. In Norway and Iceland housing policy is based on home ownership, in Denmark on renting, in Sweden and Finland on both tenures. Accordingly the position of owner occupation has been different in different national housing policies. In recent times all the Nordic countries have encountered similar pressures towards less state intervention and more market-oriented solutions in housing provision. The effects of the public sector’s retrenchment from housing provision on the position of home ownership are discussed in the paper focusing specifically on the countries where policies are most challenged.

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Conference proceedings

conference paper

(c) 2008 Ruonavaara, H.