Europe and housing policies. Undergoing changes

Abstract

The article reflects on changes in housing policies in Europe in the context of the process of globalization and sociocultural transformations of today's society. These changes are largely due to the criticism of the consequences of the previous paradigm of social neighbourhood construction, the retreat of the State in direct housing provision, the decentralization of the housing issue, the search for new partners, and so on. Housing policies in European countries are now a complex mix of programmes, with different publics and funding, which also aim to respond to the diversity of profiles, investments in housing and the volatility of housing and financial markets. The production of new social housing is one of the lines of this policy, and it is certainly not the most significant that maintains its place today, thought much more carefully and experimentally. Public intervention in housing is now more indirect with a decrease in direct intervention in the provision of housing replaced by an intense legislative profusion that makes the co-production of housing policies more complex, and based on a private market orientation through the negotiation of compensating social groups with solvency problems.