ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the 1980s, the Danish economy was in deep crisis and, for the first time since before the war, unemployment was becoming a serious problem. Owner-occupation may continue to grow slowly and to house the majority of Danes, but it is unlikely to recover the overwhelmingly dominant position it seemed set to enjoy at the turn of the 1980s. A second major housing initiative of the 1980s was the encouragement of private co-operatives. These were different from ‘social housing’ co-operatives in that they were largely privately financed and each member bought a 20 per cent stake in the property. Forty-three per cent of the poorest households still lived in private-rented housing in the late 1980s. Its tenants comprised disproportionate numbers of elderly households, young people leaving home, immigrant workers and refugees. Some of the unpopular 1960s and 1970s estates with vacant units in the early 1980s took disproportionate numbers of urban renewal rehousing cases.
