ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses private sector housing, and in particular its newbuild component, only as part of a greater whole. The housing policy process involves a large industry, employing thousands and spending millions of pounds of public money each year. As a result, the provision of subsidised housing for poorer people has for a long time been an important object of public policy. However, the housing market is in fact a complex combination of tenures, market and non-market, inhabited by a widely varying population. Housing problems tend to focus on issues of housing which is of the wrong type or quality. No simple means test would on its own provide the basis for the best level of housing provision consistent with a given scale of housing budget.
