ABSTRACT
Housing policies have been, and explicitly so until the early 1970s, basically quantitative policies. The solution to the housing problem, defined in terms of absolute shortage, has everywhere been seen as lying in a greater number of new dwellings being finished each year. The rise or fall in housebuilding activity on the part of each type of promoter is accompanied by reorganisation processes, restructuring and internal crises. The first concerns the nature of the housing produced. To state that housing policy and production in Europe have long been dominated by the problem of quantity does not mean that there have not also been re distributive and qualitative targets. In particular, from the end of the 1960s onwards, there was a clear change in all the countries of Europe from policies supporting the production of housing towards policies supporting the demand for housing.
