ABSTRACT
As noted in Chapter 3, the process of maturation has been almost totally neglected in the public rental housing literature. There are two main reasons for this. In the first place, cost rental and public rental systems are nearly all relatively immature. Their growth is largely limited to the post-war period, which has seen a massive expansion of social renting in many countries. It is really only since the 1970s —and in some countries considerably later-that maturation has accelerated to the extent that it has begun to have a noticeable effect on holding costs down. The reason for this has been a combination of rising inflation and falling rates of new production. This acceleration in maturation has varied from country to country both in its rate and in its timing.
