ABSTRACT
Housing was viewed as a social right for which the state should take responsibility, and provided as a social overhead: publicly or cooperatively provided and owned, and consumed by citizens paying minimal rents. Much of the western literature, including that of and about the old Eastern European countries and more frequently with individual elements in their systems: trends in home ownership, the construction industry, the regeneration of social housing estates, the effects of rent control. As in China, there were characteristic limitations of these arrangements. These were brought to the attention of Western researchers by Ivan Szelenyi (1983) who presented a convincing argument that the limitations were inherent in the very nature of the socialist approach. The viewing of housing as a social overhead meant that it was seen as consumption, which, in the long run, tended to be given lower priority than economic investment.
