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It was not until the late 1960s that housing attracted much attention from academic social scientists. Since that time the literature has expanded widely and diversified, establishing housing with a specialised status in economics, sociology, politics, and in related subjects. As we would expect, the new literature covers a technical, statistical, theoretical, ideological, and historical range. Housing studies have not been conceived and interpreted in a monolithic way, with generally accepted concepts and principles, or with uniformly fixed and precise methodological approaches. Instead, some studies have been derived selectively from diverse bases in conventional theories in economics or sociology, or politics. Others have their origins in less conventional social theory, including neo‐Marxist theory which has had a wider intellectual following in the modern democracies since the mid‐1970s. With all this diversity, and in a context where ideological positions compete, housing studies have consequently left in their wake some significant controversies and some gaps in evaluative perspective. In short, the new housing intellectuals have written from personal commitments to particular cognitive, theoretical, ideological, and national positions and experiences. This present piece of writing takes up the two main themes which have emerged in the recent literature. These themes are first, questions relating to building and developing housing theory, and, second, the issue of how we are to conceptualise housing and relate it to policy studies. We shall be arguing that the two themes are closely related: in order to create a useful housing theory we must have awareness and understanding of housing practice and the nature of housing.

This article sets out to explore whether right wing parties have made a difference to the way housing policy was formulated in the UK and Israel. Both countries provide similar examples of national approaches to housing policy. We shall review two policy developments, rent control and improving housing conditions in the inner cities.

The housing policies targeting low-income households have not been effective to address the housing needs of target groups in Iran over the past four decades. According to the World Bank’s data on population living in slums (% of urban population) in Iran in 2018 was 25% which is slightly higher than the rate 23% of upper-middle-income countries. This study aims to understand what major revisions are required in the process of housing policymaking to have more effective policies.

The authors conduct one-to-one interviews with 41 housing experts and apply discourse analysis and interpretive–structural modeling to achieve the goals.

The panel of experts argue that the success of housing policies in Iran depends on the following: all academic disciplines should be included in the process of housing policymaking process; land policymaking should be modified; housing policy is a regional issue, and it should be designed and implemented differently in each province; main modifications are required in the tax and tenancy system; and new policies are required to push vacant houses into the rental market.

This study is a prescriptive study based on a general trend (four decades).

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical summary of UK housing policies. It aims to evaluate UK government's housing policies, before and after the publication of the Barker Review, to tackle affordability issues in the owner‐occupied sector. It examines the extent to which housing policy contributes to or alleviates the problem of the affordability of owner‐occupied housing.

This paper evaluates the impact of UK government housing policies since 2000 on housing affordability by analysing their impact on the dynamics of housing demand and supply.

The Barker Review, which applied simple economic ideas and techniques in analysing the owner‐occupied UK housing market, argued that increases in new housing supply would help to improve housing affordability. The second Barker Review suggested that changes to the planning system were needed in order not only to increase new housing supply, but to make housing supply more sensitive to changing demands. The Barker Reviews brought about a major re‐think in government policy towards housing, particularly relating to new build and the planning system. However, the heavy reliance on the private sector to provide additional housing has reduced the effectiveness of policy changes. In addition, the adoption by the government of “demand‐side” housing policies has done little to negate the volatility of UK house prices or to raise the overall affordability of owner‐occupied housing.

This paper reflects on government failures in UK housing policy in addressing the affordability of owner‐occupied housing. The findings will be of interest to policy makers and housing researchers.

Emerging states confront staggering shortages in adequate housing stock. In response, governments have sought various supply-based solutions to mitigate growing housing deficits. While many of these mass housing efforts have not produced the desired outcome, the Republic of Korea’s Two Million Housing Drive (TMHD) was a comparatively successful intervention with its implementation from 1988 to 1992. The five-year initiative exceeded its objective with the construction of over 2.1 million units – of which two-thirds were built by the private sector. The purpose of this study is to analyse Korea’s relatively effective supply-based affordable housing approach and then extrapolate best practices and lessons learned with applications for real estate markets in the developing world. Comparative understanding of the TMHD can help promote greater access to adequate housing in the developing world, especially for the many who continue to live in impoverished conditions.

The research uses content-based and quantitative methods to analyze the case of the TMHD in Korea toward informing improvements in corresponding supply-based housing policies and programs in developing states.

While there were challenges with the TMHD, the program repositioned Korea’s urban housing market with greater access to affordable housing in cities for the lower-income and vulnerable. The TMHD enabled the subsequent effectiveness of demand-based housing policies.

There are research limitations in fully understanding the complex relationships between mass housing programs, economic growth and government policies. The abductive reasoning used in this case study enables in-depth analysis of the TMHD with generalizable inferences for middle-range theories with applications for emerging markets.

The experience of the TMHD can promote policy harmonization by helping optimize corresponding mass housing efforts in the developing world with the potential to similarly close quantitative housing deficits and expand access to adequate housing for lower-income and vulnerable households.

Deeper understanding of the TMHD can lead to reforms of other mass housing initiatives in emerging markets to make adequate housing more accessible and economical for the benefit of underserved segments of society.

The Korean experience with the TMHD can inform the optimization of other similar large-scale policies and programs seeking to sustainably overcome shortfalls in adequate housing that have become all too common in the developing world.

Rural welfare is more than addressing problems of ‘poverty’. As we argue here, social policy initiatives are also conceived by governments as solutions to geographical problems about uneven regional development and population distribution. What these problems were, and how welfare provision could solve them, has varied from generation to generation and takes shape in place-specific ways. That welfare provision has operated as de facto geographical development and population policy is particularly the case in Australia, in its context of massive continental size and heterogeneous rural places. In Australia, the ‘rural’ means much more than just the ‘countryside’ surrounding or between networks of cities and towns (in the traditional European sense; see Gorman-Murray, Darian-Smith, & Gibson, 2008). ‘Rural Australia’ is inserted into national politics as a slippery geographical category, coming to encompass all of non-metropolitan Australia (each of Australia's states only having one major city), within which there is great diversity: broadacre farming regions involving the production of cash crops at scales of thousands of squared kilometres; regions producing rice and cotton with state-sponsored irrigation; coastal agricultural zones with smaller and usually older land holdings (often the places of traditional ‘family farming’ communities); single industry regions focused around minerals extraction or defence (many of Australia's major defence bases being located outside state capitals either in sparsely populated regions in Australia's north or in smaller ‘country towns’ in the south, where they dominate local demography); semi-arid rangelands regions dominated by enormous pastoral stations leased on Crown land (single examples of which rival the United Kingdom in size); and remote savannah and desert regions many thousands of kilometres from capital cities, supporting Aboriginal communities living on traditional country mixing subsistence hunting and gathering with government-supported employment and food programmes. In this context, rural welfare performs a social policy function, but also becomes a means for government to comprehend, problematise and manage geographical space.

The purpose of this paper is to examine problems of housing delivery in Nigeria and propose some guiding principles that will lead to successful housing delivery in Nigeria.

The study was conducted through in-depth analysis of some documents related to housing sector in Nigeria. These include National Housing Policy of Nigeria, Report of the Vision 2020 National Technical Working Group on Housing, as well as publications from UN-Habitat. Moreover, literature on the subject matter have been also reviewed.

Major constraints to housing delivery in Nigeria includes lack of effective housing finance system, unstable macroeconomic environment, difficulty in accessing land with secure tenure, high cost of building materials, shortages of skilled labour and poor infrastructural facilities.

The major limitation of this study is that no interview or field survey to collect data from stakeholders has been performed.

The study can assist housing policy makers to understands important elements that must be incorporated in the national housing policies. It can also assist construction industries to understand how to improve efficiency and productivity in their projects.

The findings of this paper was based on previous studies of housing delivery and analysis of data from some formal and informal documents The findings from this study have been used to suggest some guiding principles that can assist in solving the housing delivery problems in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to assess new and often innovative models that aim to fund and deliver affordable housing in Scotland within a context of fiscal crisis. These models and their setting have implications for other countries with limited funds to support their housing systems.

This paper is a policy analysis, drawing on ideas from public policy and applied economics. It derives a set of criteria with which to provide an interim assessment of both key proposals and the policy programme as a whole.

The new models and the government's approach are pragmatic and have elements of genuine innovation. Other elements are only aspirations at this point and considerable uncertainties remain. The new environment will be difficult for housing associations but also in terms of wider knock‐on effects between the market‐rented sector and intermediate housing. Major concerns remain about rent levels and there is a lack of clarity about government's long‐term objectives for social housing.

The paper provides a first critical overview and initial assessment of radical new policies for affordable housing in Scotland. The paper's subject matter is of direct relevance to all national housing systems confronting shortages of public resources, a demonstrable need for more affordable housing, and also those contemplating radical reform to tried and tested funding and delivery models.

The Nigerian Government has been left behind in the planning of homes for the senior citizens as they are aged and retire from service. The possible outcome is untimely death of many because of contagious illness associated with the dilapidated environment in their abode. Hence, this paper attempts to investigate the hindrances of home ownership faced by senior citizens and proffers possible policy solutions.

A phenomenology type of qualitative research was adopted and 30 participants were interviewed. That is, ten from four different state government agencies and 20 senior citizens using purposive and snowball sampling techniques and data saturation was also achieved. The data derived were analysed using MAXQDA 2018 and through a thematic analysis.

This paper found that Nigerian low-income senior citizens (LISCs) who owned houses lived more stable well-being. Whilst the level of home ownership was completely dissatisfying as failed mortgage finance, corruption in the pension scheme, relaxed National Housing Policy implementation and inadequate senior citizens’ home ownership policy were identified as the encumbrances.

This paper is limited to exploring the root cause of LISCs’ inability to gain home ownership and proffering possible solutions. Future research is needed to use relevant information in advancing home ownership policy for the low-income groups across the states in Nigeria and other developing countries.

This paper recommended that government should impose housing construction on three acres and above, mitigate corruption, establish special housing loan scheme for senior citizens, sustain rent-to-own policy and land subsidy in cities to enhance senior citizens’ home ownership. These recommendations form part of the paper's practical implications.

This paper demonstrates that existing housing policies are yet to consider the senior citizens regarding enhancing their home ownership status.