International Handbook of Housing Policies and Practices

This important new source provides greater insight into and awareness of housing experiences in other societies, allowing for a more informed assessment of our own national experiences and priorities. This unique compilation points to the value of cross-national work when dealing with these complex issues. Choice Housing issues and policy problems are both universal in scope and, at the same time, inherently specific to a given time and place. All countries are wrestling with their own housing problems and with the everyday mechanics of housing supply and regulation. Specific problems vary immensely from country to country and the policy instruments and institutions chosen to address those problems vary. As the chapters in this volume make clear, definitions of housing problems and approaches to housing policies are firmly embedded in particular national and cultural contexts. A long-awaited signal publication, this book is an important new source of analyses and information necessary to understand these contexts. It also is a major work of reference that provides the raw materials for undertaking comparative studies of housing issues and policy problems. The contributors are renowned authorities in the field who demonstrate how housing is worldwide an integral component of a nation's financial system, its social structure, and its political and policy making apparatus. Because this book provides greater insight in and awareness of experiences in other societies, it allows for a more informed assessment of our own national experiences and priorities. As the contributors make clear, there are no complete or simple solutions to contemporary housing problems. This unique compilation points to the value of cross-national work when dealing with these complex issues. It will be essential reading for scholars and policymakers alike who are concerned with housing issues.

WILLEM VAN VLIET is a sociologist in the College of Environmental Design and a Research Associate in the Program on Population Processes in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is secretary of the Executive Council of the Working Group on Housing and the Built Environment of the International Sociological Association. He has edited several books on housing including Housing Markets and Policies Under Fiscal Austerity (Greenwood Press, 1987), Housing and Neighborhoods (with H. Choldin, W. Michelson, and D. Popenoe) (Greenwood Press, 1987), the Handbook of Housing and the Built Environment in the United States (with E. Huttman, Greenwood Press, 1988), and Women, Housing and Community.