ABSTRACT
Home ownership there was discouraged and, in the USSR, two-thirds of households rented accommodation in 1990, mostly in public housing. Public housing also contributed substantially to the housing stock in many countries in northern Europe. In Mao's China virtually all urban residents lived in public housing until policy changed in 1988. In broad terms, tenure patterns across countries can be explained in terms of the level of urbanisation, the level of economic development, the dominant form of economic organisation and the ideology of the government. Insofar as migrants come from a different racial or ethnic group than that of the resident urban population, landlords and tenants are likely to have different ethnic backgrounds. Governments in most poor countries face a choice between allowing the proliferation of self-help ownership, and all of the problems that causes in terms of urban sprawl and infrastructure provision, and improving shelter conditions by encouraging small-scale landlordism.
