Learning from history

Abstract

European social housing history can be interpreted through the combination of two complementary notions: path dependency and change. Socio-political experiences and practices at the national, regional or municipal level are potentially powerful determinants of historical developments—an idea known as path dependency. However, they do not stop unexpected and sometimes rapid change. Change is produced by the combination of inherited experiences and mutations in specific demographic, political, social and economic circumstances. Different institutional contexts in different countries, and the varying interplay of actors in each, means that the history of social housing reflects a complex patchwork of disparate legislative, financial and architectural realities rather than a linear evolution. Our paper will therefore not offer a chronology of social housing but a descriptive and analytical view of the main historical sequences in which the fundamental ideas of social housing were implemented and the most significant configurations of actors and institutions that emerged. The article’s general thesis is backed up by a specific examination of three countries where the social housing sector has traditionally been large, and where it still accounts for a significant percentage of the whole housing supply: Austria, France, and the Netherlands. All three countries share a strong tradition of municipal power in their biggest cities, where social housing makes up a huge percentage of the total housing stock. The development of social housing is deeply rooted in the political history of each country and its development of the modern welfare state. The comparative approach thus offers an opportunity to observe the different administrative and geographical layers of social housing policies, and the changing structure of social propriety produced by the actors’ interplay.