ABSTRACT
Some characteristics of German housing provision affect the delivery of housing services: the intense regulation of finance and of standards of repair and access leads to more even and better general conditions than in Britain. One of the strongest influences on post-war German housing was the imperative to build. This led to an ‘all hands to the wheel’ policy, with help for all producers willing to house people. While most German housing was built in small blocks of flats in cities, increasingly single-family or two-family houses became popular and a majority of recent production has been in that form. The main success of German housing policy was to keep a large and varied renting system. Social housing was frequently moved between front-and back-burner as new crises developed. The influx of East Europeans created demand that could not immediately be met, either through rapid access to owner-occupation or through rapidly rising ‘free market’ rents.
