housing developments in european countries - Department of ...

Section 1
Introduction and Summary
Introduction and Summary Section 1
Danish, Swedish and French governments have
introduced incentives intended to encourage investment
in this sector. The management of social rented
housing and its increasingly residual nature in socioeconomic
terms is also identified as a key issue in
housing policy statements in many of the long-standing
EU members. As a result, the governments of the
Flanders and Wallonia regions of Belgium,
Luxembourg, Ireland and Denmark, are endeavouring
to promote a more diverse spatial mix of different
housing tenures, in an effort to reduce the social
exclusion of disadvantaged groups. In addition, a
range of reforms to arrangements for social housing
provision and management has been introduced. In
Denmark, for instance, in recent years housing policy
has placed increased emphasis on the involvement of
the private sector in providing and managing social
housing by means of public-private partnership
arrangements. The regional governments in Belgium
are working to enhance co-operation between the
various associations which provide social housing, and
if necessary encourage their geographical relocation in
order to ensure that social housing needs in all parts of
the country are adequately addressed. In Finland the
income limits for access to social housing have recently
been increased. Socio-economic deprivation and the
associated physical dereliction of housing in inner-city
areas is also a focus of intervention by governments in
several of the longstanding EU member States. Thus, in
many of these countries a range of urban renewal
measures has been introduced in recent years, typically
involving tax incentives to encourage the provision of
new and refurbished housing in these locations. The
Netherlands is notable for the particularly large
number of urban renewal initiatives in operation.
Many of these were originally proposed in the
Government policy statement What People Want,
Where People Live, published in December 2002.
In contrast, housing policy makers in Bulgaria,
Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania are
primarily concerned with responding to the effects of
the sale of formerly State-owned housing. One of these
effects is a shortage of social rented units in many CEE
countries, which policy makers are attempting to
address by increasing the output of dwellings in this
tenure. The private rented sector in many of these
countries is also very small and, in the view of many
policy makers, its further development has been
impeded by rent control measures. Thus, the Slovakian
Government has recently liberalised the regulation of
this sector and the Polish and Estonian governments
are also currently considering potential reforms in this
regard. The comparative under-development of the
private mortgage lending market is of concern to
policy makers in several of the new EU member States,
on the grounds that this deficiency has hindered the
provision of new private housing because neither
potential property developers nor home buyers can
access the requisite finance. In response, the Polish,
Slovenian and Slovakian governments have all funded
low interest loan schemes to enable households and
social housing providers to build or renovate
dwellings. In Estonia government intervention in the
mortgage market has taken a distinctive form – the
State Bank guarantees a proportion of mortgages
raised by specified types of households from
commercial lenders.
As was mentioned above, policy makers in a number
of countries face specific issues which are not of
concern in other European countries but are very
significant in the national context. For instance, in
Turkey managing the aftermath of the major
earthquake which occurred in 1999 in the Marmara
region of the country is a key concern for government,
as is dealing with unauthorised ‘squatter’ dwellings
and discouraging further developments of this type in
the future. As part of their negotiations regarding
accession to the EU, the Maltese and Czech
governments have introduced measures to restrict the
purchase of second homes. In Cyprus the Government
has introduced a number of measures to house families
which are refugees as a result of the partition of the
island in 1974.
1.4.3 Outcomes
Demand for housing at the national level significantly
exceeds supply in more than half of the countries
examined in this review. However, the severity of the
demand/supply imbalance varies extensively between
countries. Broadly speaking, problems in this regard
are less severe in the 15 longstanding
EU member States. Rising
numbers of households, usually
associated with falling average
household size, are a key driver of
housing demand in all the
European countries where the
market is not in equilibrium. In
several of the new EU members,
the size and quality of the existing
housing stock is also a significant
driver of housing demand. In these
countries, the expected future
development of the mortgage
market will also inflate housing
demand by facilitating house
purchase on a large scale. The
governments of the vast majority
of the 28 countries reported
localised housing shortages, which
affect specific regions of the
country or parts of the housing
market.
Housing is supplied through three
mechanisms: new construction, the
conversion of non-residential
buildings to housing use and the
rehabilitation of obsolete
dwellings. In all 28 countries, the
first of these three mechanisms
makes the biggest contribution to
new housing supply. However, the
level of housing construction varies
internationally.
Figure
1.4.1
Trends in new house building in
2000 are sketched in FIGURE 1.4.1.
In this graph, Portugal, Spain and
Note:
the Republic of Ireland are
categorised as ‘high output’
countries, on the grounds that they
had by far the largest housing output per capita in
Europe. Conversely, levels of new house building in a
number of countries are categorised as low in the
wider European context. The countries in this category
are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia,
Annual Dwelling Unit Completions per 1,000 Population
in European Countries, 2000
Latvia
Bulgaria
Lithuania
Romania
Sweden
Hungary
Poland
Slovakia
Czech Republic
Denmark
United Kingdom
Slovenia
Germany
Greece
Belgium
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Finland
France
Austria
Cyprus
Portugal
Ireland
Spain
0.4
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.7
2.5
2.3
2.39
2.5
2.9
3.1
3.1
3.5
3.7
3.9
4.5
Very low output
Low output
Moderate output
High output
Figures represent the number of dwelling units constructed on an annual basis per 1,000 population.
5.3
See TABLE 4.2.1 in Section 4 of the main report for full details of the data on which this graph is based. All
data are for 2000, with the exception of: Spain (2002 data), Luxembourg (2001 data), Germany (2002
data) and Greece (average annual output since 1998). Data for Estonia, Italy and Turkey are not available.
6.3
6.37
6.6
7.6
11.5
13.15
13.8
Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden. It
is interesting to note that, with the exception of
Sweden, all of the countries in this category are in
Central and Eastern Europe. In most of these countries
housing output rates dropped sharply after their
12 European Union Report
Regular National Report on Housing Developments in European Countries
13