ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an evaluation of housing reforms in Slovakia with a particular emphasis on their impact over the provision of public rental housing. It focuses on the two significant outcomes of the reform process–the decline in new public housing construction as a result of subsidy cutbacks, and the impact of privatization on public housing. The chapter reviews the prospects for social housing in the context of new housing policy developments. Housing policy reforms in Slovakia need to respond to significant economic and social challenges. While declining rates of investment in new construction contributed to a limited supply of new public housing, its privatization had a much more significant impact. Rates of home ownership, fuelled by the transfer of public housing but also to some extent transformation of the coops, have reached levels way above the European Union average of 56 per cent.
