Housing Matters

Housing matters to the livability of
cities and to the productivity of their economies. The
failure of cities to accommodate the housing needs of
growing urban populations can be seen in the proliferation
of poorly serviced, high-density informal settlements. Such
settlements are not new in the history of rapidly growing
cities, their persistence results as much from policies as
from economics and demographic transition. Slums have
attracted most of the attention on urban housing in
developing countries, and the Millennium Development Goals
have given prominence to their reduction. However, urban
housing issues transcend conditions in slums and are linked
closely to economic activity. City economies influence
housing demand, and in turn the flexibility of housing
supply affects economic activity and city growth. This paper
provides an overview of the policy and institutional
building blocks that determine housing sector performance,
drawing on studies from both developed and developing
countries. It focuses on property rights, including tenure
choice, housing finance, and subsidies. It also reviews the
factors that affect supply: the availability of serviced
land, as well as land and housing regulations. While these
elements have been standard tools of housing policy, they
are still the subject of considerable debate over their
sequencing, policy content, and priority. There has been a
great deal of emphasis over the last two decades on
demand-side measures to improve property rights systems,
develop housing finance, and even to introduce new subsidy
systems. All these developments are important, but as this
paper argues, less progress has been made in understanding
and addressing the factors that constrain supply, which
often thwart improvements on the demand side.