ABSTRACT
Following significant rates of growth in the Western member states over the entire post-war period, and in many of the Eastern member states over the period after the break-up of the Soviet Union, home ownership is now the predominant tenure in Europe; with some two-thirds of households now owning, Europe may be accurately described as a ‘union of home owners’ (Doling and Ford, 2007). Recent discussion about this growth and other developments in the housing systems of advanced economies have been markedly skewed towards the impact of globalisation and the associated rise of neo-liberalism (e.g. Doling and Ford, 2003; Malpass, 2006; Ronald, 2008; Stephens, 2003). One element of much of this discussion has been that these macro processes have underlain – in some interpretations, forced – the tendency for states to retreat from social forms of housing provision in favour of private forms, especially home ownership. Thus, Peter Malpass has argued that, although responding in different ways, each country is doing so in ‘response to the pressures arising from globalisation … [resulting in] … a general tendency to cut back on universal services funded from taxation … Housing … has been at the leading edge of reform’ (Malpass, 2006, p. 109).
