ABSTRACT
Arguments about housing policy are usually based, implicitly if not explicity, on different conceptions of equity or distributive justice. This chapter reviews four conceptions of equity endorsed by proponents of different political ideologies. It illustrates the gap between ideology and practice. The traditional Social Democratic or Labour view has been that governments should intervene in the housing sector in order to ensure decent basic standards of housing for lower income families. The liberal, Social Democratic, Marxian and élitist conceptions of equity are too abstract to be used empirically as a basis for reviewing national policy programmes. Linkages between the empirical concepts of vertical and horizontal equity and the more abstract ideological concepts of liberal, Social Democratic, Marxian and élitist equity are easy enough to make. Liberal equity would be manifested in a low level of governmental intervention in the housing market and such programmes as were enacted would be horizontally and vertically neutral.
