Routledge Social Housing in Transition Countries (Routledge Studies in Health and Social Welfare)

This volume intends to fill the gap in the range of publications about the post-transition social housing policy developments in Central and Eastern Europe by delivering critical evaluations about the past two decades of developments in selected countries’ social housing sectors, and showing what conditions have decisively impacted these processes. Contributors depict the different paths the countries have taken by reviewing the policy changes, the conditions institutions work within, and the solutions that were selected to answer the housing needs of vulnerable households. They discuss whether the differences among the countries have emerged due to the time lag caused by belated reforms in selected countries, or whether any of the disparities can be attributed to differences inherited from Soviet times. Since some of the countries have recently become member states of the European Union, the volume also explores whether there were any convergence trends in the policy approaches to social housing that can be attributed to the general changes brought about by the EU accession. Review "a very readable account of social housing reforms in 12 countries in transition that will appeal to a wide audience... it provide[s] a detailed and informative overview of country-specific housing reforms and will be of interest to policy-makers and non-government institutions engaged in the policy dialogue in the region. Housing policy, urban studies and social geography scholars and students, to name just a few, could use the book as a supplementary reading in courses on post-socialist transformation. The contributions in this volume retrace an important aspect of housing policy reforms in the context of transition essential for the future of social housing in wider Europe." – International Journal of Housing Policy About the Author Nóra Teller, a sociologist, has worked on several international projects for the Council of Europe, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the European Commission’s 5th, 6th and 7th Framework research programmes and the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON). József Hegedüs is a founding member of the Metropolitan Research Institute and a part-time associate professor at Corvinus University Budapest. Martin Lux is head of the Department of Socio-Economics of Housing at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague.