NEW TRENDS WITHIN SOCIAL HOUSING MANAGEMENT

The paper provides an overview of trends and processes of change affecting social housing management in the EU countries. While it is clear that the rationale behind and mechanisms by which social housing is provided and managed varies greatly between the countries, due to globalization some common trends may be distinguished, e.g. limiting the scope of government intervention in the sphere of housing, as well as cutting public expenditures in this segment. The consequence is a progressive decentralization of housing policy and privatization of tasks related to housing. In many European countries, there is a notion that the system of new social housing provision should not only be socially, but also financially effective. Therefore, social housing actors are challenged to market-orient their statutory tasks in the light of rising constraints: dwindling financial backup, growing needs for affordable housing, and very often lack of cost recovery. The study focuses on the Swedish social housing system as it is a model that is undergoing extensive changes, i.e. "marketisation" of the social housing sector. The paper presents changes to the model and discusses whether they map a different trajectory for the future of social housing in Sweden.