ABSTRACT
Community development has emerged as a field in part because of the demonstrable inability of the mainstream, for-profit housing sector to provide decent, truly affordable housing for low-income people. To redress this inability, a large and increasing share of housing must be treated as a social resource rather than as a commodity yielding private windfalls. Since, all housing contains both social and individual rights and interests, differing only in the nature and extent of their social characteristics, it is thus appropriate and useful to conceptualize a continuum of housing ownership forms. As discussed in this chapter, “social ownership” encompasses that portion of the spectrum where the overriding social interest is to ensure security of tenure and permanent affordability.
