ABSTRACT
The Opportunity Structure Approach widens the scope of rational choice theory through introducing external social institutions: social agencies, their rules and regulations. Social institutions operate beyond the level of individual households. They largely determine the supply of provisions, entailing processes of producing, managing and distributing. Housing is a crucial provision insofar as the characteristics of a dwelling imply opportunities or constraints for the functioning of family households in a strict sense. Its location implies the accessibility of most other facilities which are important to family households, such as the access to an appropriate part of the job market, the access to preferred school types, health care provisions, kinship and other informal social networks, etc. The inter-organizational model is intended to reveal incompatible goals and interests, and unequal power relationships, among competing agencies in a certain field of provisioning, and to illuminate the way in which public authorities intervene between supplying agencies or actors.
