Housing Policy in Europe provides a comprehensive introduction to the economic, political and social issues of housing across the continent.
The changing policy and practice of housing in fifteen countries from across Northern, Western, Southern and Central Europe are described, analyzed and compared.
The book explains why different systems of tenure are dominant in different groups of countries, and the extent to which housing policies within these countries conform to different welfare systems.
It reveals how owner-occupation has taken over from social housing as the chosen system of tenure and how this reflects a political and economic shift, from social democracy or communism to neo-liberalism across Europe.

The family is currently a controversial topic both within the UK and Europe. While demographic trends seem to suggest that family structures and attitudes within the European Union are converging and that member states are facing similar social problems, their policy responses are very different. This book examines the differences between these national responses and that of the EU as contained in the social chapter. It analyses the key concepts underlying the formulation of family policy and illustrates it with the latest data much of it hitherto unpublished.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Scandinavia as a regional international society, including the Nordic Peace and the rise of the Scandinavian welfare state. Schouenborg aims to take the next big step in the theoretical development of the English School of International Relations - particularly the structural version introduced by Barry Buzan. He analyses the formation of a Scandinavian regional international society over a 200-year period and develops the concepts of 'primary institutions' and 'binding forces' as an analytical framework. In doing so, he not only offers one of the first systematic applications of English School structural theory, but also sheds a new comparative light on the distinctiveness of Scandinavian international relations, and provides a novel intervention in the debates about the emergence of the so-called Nordic Peace. In the first part of the book Schouenborg explains the core concepts and discusses how one may distinguish a regional international society from the broader global international society in which it is embedded. In the second part he provides an in-depth study of the Scandinavian case, focussing on the periods 1815 to 1919; 1919 to 1989; and 1989 to 2010. The Scandinavian International Society will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations theory, Scandinavian international relations and history, and researchers engaged in comparative welfare state studies.

This work offers information about the provision of rented housing in several European countries, and includes topics such as policy instruments, social housing issues and affordability. It should be relevant to housing, surveying and planning students courses with a European housing element/option. The text explains the development, financing and management of rented housing in several European countries. It also examines the issues surrounding the provision of social housing - municipal and association housing - in France, Germany and the Netherlands. The book is both policy - and practice - orientated, and offers specific detail and arguments on aspects of rented housing in several countries, as well as information on policy developments.

Born out of the Sankey Commission's identification of the appalling living and working conditions of coal miners, the Miners' Welfare Fund was established by the Mining Industry Act 1920 to improve the social conditions of colliery workers. Administered by the Miners' Welfare Committee, it was totally dependent on a levy on the ton of the national output of coal and, from 1926, the levy on mineral rights for its income. Despite industrial unrest, world economics, parliamentary legislation, parliamentary enquiries and world conflict, the Committee and, from 1939, the Commission, in collaboration with the twenty-five District Committees, doggedly pursed their statutory remits of recreation, pit and social welfare, mining education and research into safety in mines. With such a geographically dispersed organisation and a fund without precedent, there were mistakes and 'misunderstandings' but, despite these, there were great achievements, including the Architects' Branch winning international recognition for its designs of pithead baths and the Rehabilitation Service for injured miners gaining national recognition for its quality of care. With the passing of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act and the National Health Service Act in 1946, the rationale for the Miners' Welfare Commission became less clear and a decision was taken in June 1951 that it be terminated. The Miners' Welfare Act 1952 brought the fund to an end. During the thirty-one years of the fund, nearly GBP30,000,000 had been allocated.

Residential relocation is the household decision that generates housing consumption changes. It is not merely a decision about changing locations; it is also a decision about tenure--about whether to own or to rent. Research into housing markets has been largely focused on the process of changing from renting to owning, as most countries in the Western world have moved from predominantly rental societies to societies of homeowners.

Households and Housing is designed to demonstrate the interconnections between the housing stock and households. The focus is on understanding the demand for housing and the way in which the demand is fulfilled as households select housing. This book is concerned with both the decision to move one's residence and the resulting type of housing choice. The housing supply--the stock of dwellings--is the context within which households make choices and acquire housing.

The authors use the concepts of life course, housing career, and housing hierarchy to trace the movement of households through the housing market. They paint a comprehensive picture of housing consumption by age, income, and tenure choice, illustrated with nearly 150 figures and tables. US housing market data are contrasted with data from the Netherlands to document the differential effects of government intervention. This is the most up-to-date analysis available on the dynamics of housing choices and housing markets.

Southern Europe has been hit hard by the global economic crisis and, as such, their welfare states have come under acute strain. Unmet need has sharply increased while significant welfare reforms and deep social spending cuts have been prominent in the crisis management solutions implemented by governments, labouring under EU constraints and the strict rescue-deal requirements for Greece and Portugal. This volume provides a systematic comparative appraisal of welfare-state reform trajectories across Southern Europe prior to and during the crisis, and traces the impact of austerity policies and wider recession upon income inequality and poverty. It brings together a number of cross-country studies on major social policy areas, raising crucial questions. What policy choices are driving reforms as Southern European economies work their way out of fiscal difficulty? Can the crisis provoke the improvement of institutional capabilities and recalibration of social? Or, instead, does structural adjustment indicate a significant policy turn towards the erosion of social rights? The contributions critically approach these issues and bring evidence to bear upon whether Southern European welfare capitalisms are becoming more dissimilar. This book was originally published as a special issue of South European Society & Politics.

Christian democracy has been one of the most successful political movements in post-war Western Europe yet its crucial impact on the development of the modern European welfare state has been neglected. In this study, Kees van Kersbergen demonstrates the precise nature of the links between Christian democracy and the welfare state. Using a variety of sources the author describes the origin and development of the Christian Democratic movement and presents comparative accounts of the varying degrees of political entrenchment of national Christian Democratic parties. Drawing upon cross-national indicators of welfare state development he identifies and explains the existence of a distinctively Christian Democratic (as opposed to a liberal or social democratic) welfare-state regime which he labels "social capitalism".

Government investments in social sector has always played an important role in tackling social issues and facilitated in the alleviation of poverty. Hence, budgetary expenditure to be mobilized for such investments needs to be efficiently allocated and utilized to maximize the greatest good. This book focuses on the social sector in India and provides an overview of the sector. The book looks at 15 major Indian states between the year 2000-2011 to see how these states had invested in social sector and whether they had met the criteria of efficient social sector investment. Using stochastic frontier models, the book provides an efficiency norm and making use of this normative estimate, it compares performance across 15 Indian states and suggests important policy implications to improve the future performance of the social sector. The book adopts various quantitative techniques in the analysis and establishes that inefficient and inappropriate allocation of inputs was made in both health and education sectors. The book suggests that such problems and future challenges could be overcome by an appropriate mix of emphasis in different activities. This book will provide insight for those who want to learn more about how to build the capacity of the social sector in more efficient manner by exploring the social sector of India.

All too often the experience of users of family therapy is neglected in the theory and practice of family therapy as well as in the literature itself. In Introducing User-Friendly Family Therapy the authors describe in detail how the results of an action research project helped the professionals involved to modify their practice. They draw out the implications of the research for providing a genuinely user-friendly service and set the arguments for a more humanistic approach in the wider context of contemporary social policy.
Thought-provoking and practical in emphasis, this book places the user at the centre of the stage and insists that family therapy can only flourish if it becomes genuinely empowering and user-friendly.

This book explores the contribution of women to the development of housing management in the 20th century. It outlines tactics and strategies of organization and factors which have seemed to help or hinder women's participation in housing. Evidence from statistical sources, historical documents and personal interviews is also assessed. Throughout the discussion, key issues are linked to current trends in the 1990s, making this volume suitable as a source of reference for students and researchers in housing and related fields.

Jim Kemeny develops a conceptual framework to present a critical study of comparative rental markets. The framework centres around the concept of the process of maturation of cost rental housing and two policies for handling this which have been adopted by industrial societies. These are, firstly, the Anglo-Saxon "dualist" system, seen in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and secondly, the Germanic "unitary market" system, seen in Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. Using a comparative approach based around international case studies, Jim Kemeny shows how each system stems from different power structures, is governed by different policy strategies, and is informed by different ideological views of how markets operate. Offering a radical critique of the orthodox view, it is argued that the time is now right for English-speaking nations to abandon state control over cost renting but allow to it to compete directly with profit renting, as in the "unitary market" model. International in scope, this volume should be of interest to researchers in housing, sociology and related fields.

Explores the impact of policy on specific groups of women and the role that they play as both tenants and managers in shpaing a service and housing design around their particular needs.

The Public Nature of Private Violence is a timely and pathbreaking book that explores the complex and diverse feminist and legal responses to domestic violence from a cross-cultural perspective. In addition to more general discussions of violence against women, the essays in this volume consider child abuse by mothers, battering in lesbian relationships, state sanctioned violence, non-physical violence and incest. The contributors argue that domestic violence must be viewed in its social and cultural context, in which the state is complicit, and not simply within the private, psychological domain of the family. The Public Nature of Private Violence offers a vast array of practical suggestions for different governmental and non-governmental actors attempting to combat the incidents of abuse and oppression suffered by women and children.

In the 1960s, America set out to end poverty. Policy-makers put forth an unprecedented package of legislation, funding poverty programs and empowering the poor through ineffectual employment-related education and training. However, these handouts produced little change, and efforts to provide education and job-training proved inconsequential, boasting only a 2.8 percent decrease in the poverty rate since 1965. Decades after the War on Poverty began, many of its programs failed. Only one thing really worked to help end poverty-and that was work itself, the centerpiece of welfare reform in 1996. Poor No More is a plan to restructure poverty programs, prioritizing jobs above all else. Traditionally, job placement programs stemmed from non-profit organizations or government agencies. However, America Works, the first for-profit job placement venture founded by Peter Cove, has the highest employee retention rate in the greater New York City area, even above these traditional agencies. When the federal government embraced the work-first ideal, inspired by the success of America Works, welfare rolls plummeted from 12.6 million to 4.7 million nationally within one decade. Poor No More is a paradigm-shifting work that guides the reader through the evolution of America's War on Poverty and urges policy-makers to eliminate training and education programs that waste time and money and to adopt a work-first model, while providing job-seekers with the tools and life lessons essential to finding and maintaining employment.

Young and Homeless in Hollywood examines the social and spacial dynamics that contributed to the construction of a new social imaginary--"homeless youth"--in the United States during a period of accelerated modernization from the mid 1970s to the 1990s. Susan Ruddick draws from a range of theoretical frameworks and empirical treatments that deal with the relationship between placemaking and the politics of social identity.

What have been the roles of charities and the state in supporting medical provision? Far from being of only historical interest, these are issues of major relevance today, as the assumptions and practices of the welfare state are increasingly thrown into doubt.
Medicine and Charity Before the Welfare State offers a broad perspective on the relationship between charity and medicine in Western Europe up to advent of welfare states in the twentieth century.
Through detailed case studies, the authors highlight significant differences between Britain, France, Italy and Germany, and offer a critical vocabulary for grasping the issues raised.
This volume reflects recent developments relating to the role of charity in medicine, particularly the revival of interest in the place of voluntary provision in contemporary social policy. It emphasises the changing balance of `care' and `cure' as the aim of medical charity, and shows how economic and political factors influenced the varying forms of charity.


eBook available with sample pages: 0203427785

First Published in 1965. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Contents:
Introduction Johnston Birchall 1. Housing policy and the disabling of local authorities Peter Malpass 2. Housing associations: a move to centre stage Mike Langstaff 3. Building societies: builders or financiers? Douglas Smallwood 4. The social and economic consequences of the growth of home ownership Stuart Lowe 5. Private rented housing and the impact of deregulation A.D.H. Crook 6. The 1987 housing policy: an enduring reform? D.A. Coleman 7. Issues of race and gender facing housing policy Norman Ginsburg and Sophie Watson 8. Council tenants: sovereign consumers or pawns in the game? Johnston Birchall Conclusion Johnston Birchall

This is a case study of the shifting boundary between family and state in Britain from the mid 1970s to 1990. The book describes a variety of family centres and shows how they have responded to the crises in child welfare and social work. The book also considers the issues of gender in policy.

How to overcome barriers to the long-term investments that are essential for solving the world's biggest problems There has never been a greater need for long-term investments to tackle the world's most difficult problems, such as climate change, human health, and decaying infrastructure. And it is increasingly unlikely that the public sector will be willing or able to fill this gap. If these critical needs are to be met, the major pools of long-term, patient capital-including pensions, sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, and wealthy individuals and families-will have to play a large role. In this accessible and authoritative account of long-term capital investment, two leading experts on the subject, Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner, highlight the significant hurdles facing long-term investors and propose concrete ways to overcome these difficulties.

The rapid political changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have had repercussions for many elements of the socialist system. Housing provision, always an important part of the socialist agenda, has undergone extensive changes. These have solved some problems but given rise to others. The studies in "The Reform of Housing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union" highlight the various aspects of housing reform, including such issues as rehabilitation, private initiatives, housing quality, welfare requirements and home ownership. While in some countries policy-makers have adhered to the older methods of housing provision, in others the number of massive state-run projects has declined in favour of smaller privately-funded enterprises. The latest changes reflect the socio-economic restructuring of the countries in general and thus housing can be seen as a spearhead for reforms throughout the system. The contributors are active researchers in the former Eastern Bloc who analyze the latest reforms and academics from Western Europe who supply a context of broader housing issues. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and academics in Soviet studies, urban studies, social

Written by experts, Sustainable Housing brings new perspectives on residential sustainability, using case studies of latest practice. This book is based upon the 'Housing and Sustainability' conference at the RIBA in 1998, which intended to guide action into the next century, setting down key principles, providing important new technical information and setting UK practices in a European context.

This work proposes a new approach to welfare: a social policy that goes beyond simple income maintenance to foster individual initiative and self-sufficiency. It argues for an asset-based policy that would create a system of saving incentives through individual development accounts (IDAs) for specific purposes, such as college education, homeownership, self-employment and retirement security. In this way, low-income Americans could gain the same opportunities that middle- and upper-income citizens have to plan ahead, set aside savings and invest in a more secure future.

What have been the roles of charities and the state in supporting medical provision? These are issues of major relevance, as the assumptions and practices of the welfare state are increasingly thrown into doubt. This title offers a broad perspective on the relationship between charity and medicine in Western Europe, up to the advent of welfare states in the 20th century. Through detailed case studies, the authors highlight significant differences between Britain, France, Italy and Germany, and offer a critical vocabulary for grasping the issues raised. This volume reflects recent developments relating to the role of charity in medicine, particularly the revival of interest in the place of voluntary provision in contemporary social policy. It emphasizes the changing balance of "care" and "cure" as the aim of medical charity, and shows how economic and political factors influenced the various forms of charity.