HOUSING, PUBLIC POLICY, POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT

Housing, Public Policy, politics and development

Housing, Public Policy, politics and development

Introduction

Housing policy includes formal laws and regulations that directly affect the construction, maintenance, and use of housing. While housing policies vary by country, they generally aim to meet both physical and social goals. Differences in national policies reflect how much faith a country has in the market to provide housing for its people and under what circumstances the state will intervene. For example, the United States first intervened in the market in response to the Great Depression, introducing new financial instruments and incentives to help jumpstart the economy by making it easier for people to buy homes. In comparison, the United Kingdom and many European countries began investing in resources to support the production of housing for lower-income working families in the late 1800s, in an effort to improve the poor living conditions resulting from rapid industrialization. In most communist states, the market was supplanted by government development programs and redistribution strategies. Poor and developing countries with limited private investment historically are more likely to rely on external agencies for housing assistance. In all cases, an outcome of interest to geographers is the spatial patterns and uneven development that result from housing policy or the absence of it.

Discussion

Housing goals may be differentiated into physical and social ones. Physical goals may be loosely defined as those concerned with the quantity and quality of housing environments. Social goals, in contrast, focus on housing affordability and equality of access.

Physical Goals

Policy sets standards that public officials use to regulate the development and use of housing. Most common are building codes to ensure sound construction and occupancy standards to prevent overcrowding. Depending on the country, standards may be national or, as in the United States, may be delegated to state and local jurisdictions to develop and enforce. While this arrangement allows for specific standards to be adapted to fit different climates and conditions, it also means that the rules guiding housing production are uneven. Still, even when standards are uniform, decisions about housing development often are not, since they are subject to human judgment.

The basis for most housing policy is health and safety. During the industrial period, for example, social reformers in the United Kingdom and the United States pushed for standards to ensure sufficient light, air, space, and sanitation in housing built to accommodate the large influx of workers to urban areas. More recently, attention has been paid to eliminating lead-based paint, reducing accidents and falls, and improving air quality inside homes, because these conditions not only contribute to disease and injury but also are expensive for families and government.

Land use restrictions also affect housing. Many countries employ zoning, a formal legal policy that designates how land can be used within a jurisdiction to produce public benefits. A common strategy has been to reduce threats to health and safety by separating the places where people live from the locations of activities that generate noxious odors or ...