ABSTRACT
Most private-rented housing was built in inner cities and much of it dated from pre-war or the early years following the war. The intense German post-war effort had produced by 1974 a rough balance between the number of households and units, with 16 million new units and about 10 million preserved and restored older units. Production dropped steadily from 1974, although it did not fall below 350,000 units a year throughout the 1970s. The urban ‘gentrification subsidies’, which urban renewal programmes quickly turned into, put increasing pressure on poor households. The policy was eventually amended because of this in the late 1980s to make conversion more difficult. Owner-occupation in the 1970s took a major upward turn, under the urban renewal schemes. The fashion for ‘mass housing’ and factory-style housing construction arrived later in Germany than elsewhere but for a while it was popular in social housing circles.
