ABSTRACT
Over the last twenty years, housing policy has become an ambiguous term. Increasingly to talk about housing policy means to talk about two very different sets of concerns, issues and possible solutions. One set of concerns relates to the circumstances of the majority, who are mainly well housed and can reasonably expect to be better housed in the future. Although these households are mainly in the market rather than the social sector, their housing outcomes are strongly affected by various types of public intervention, those which ensure continuity and reasonable market conditions in the private sector. Ensuring this means that government assumes responsibility for providing a legal framework for the enforcement of contracts; for maintaining the supply of finance; for providing output to some degree, especially counter-cyclically; for defining a land use planning framework; for maintaining affordability through subsidies, especially to owner-occupiers; and, perhaps most importantly, for ensuring steady economic growth and a reasonably high level of employment.
