ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a summary of the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ sequences of policy development which have contributed to producing changes in housing conditions and costs in Sweden, the UK and the USA. It discusses the design – or principal elements – of a policy process which might enable government to achieve its objectives and secure effective programme implementation in a policy field in which its role is largely confined to structuring incentives for private enterprise. The Swedish government in 1968, and in subsequent years, failed to convince large sections of the public of the merits of the ‘parity loan’ system. Tenants and mortgage holders were not convinced that the subsidies they received were too costly or too gravely ‘distorted’ the market. The British and American policy processes, whatever their merits in fields in which government is a monopoly supplier, are quite ineffective at producing workable housing programmes.
