ABSTRACT
Governments in western Europe intervene in housing markets by means of a variety of expenditures, taxes and controls some of which involve subsidies. Whilst the illustrative statements in this paper refer to West Germany, France, the Netherlands and the U.K. the generalisations apply to many western European countries. The necessarily retrospective nature of the discussion accounts for the continuing reference to West Germany. A housing subsidy will be viewed as an explicit or implicit flow of funds initiated by government activity which reduces the cost of housing production or consumption below what it otherwise would have been. It might involve a direct payment by government or involve a concession which reduces the taxation that otherwise would have been payable to the government or reduces the payments on a government loan to below the market level.
