east european housing
Normalisation of the Speculative Frame Method and Its Application to the Housing Market in Poland
This article proposes the normalisation of the speculative frame method for identifying real estate bubbles, price shocks, and other disturbances in the real estate market. This index-based method relies on time series data and real estate prices. In this article, the speculative frame method was elaborated and normalised with the use of equations for normalising data sets and research methodologies. The method is discussed on the example of the Polish housing market.
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Private Rental Housing Market in Poland: What Do Experts Say and What Do Actual Data Show?
The aim of the article is to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the level of housing rents using the example of the City of Krakow. This study is based on objective data on rental prices and subjective information obtained from real estate agents using a questionnaire survey. The research revealed that the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic actually led to a 6-7% decrease in prices in the rental market in Krakow, while at the same time the surveyed real estate agents had estimated that rents would drop by about 13%. With the second wave of the pandemic, it is possible to see that its immediate impact, i.e. between the third and fourth quarter of 2020, has led to a further 6.25% drop in rents. It should be noted that the latter decrease was very accurately predicted, both by the survey respondents and by the econometric models used. Finally, the results of the analysis also indicated that the worsening of the pandemic in the last quarter of 2020 will have a significant impact on rent levels in Krakow for all of next year. Regardless of how the economy develops, rental prices are forecast to fall further in 2021q1. However, in the subsequent quarters of 2021, rents are projected to increase, but ultimately their level will not return to pre-pandemic values even in 2021q4. The latter is likely to happen only in the second half of 2022.
Interpretation and Representation in Housing Policy Discourse as Exemplified by Council Tenants’ Participation in the Jazdów Estate (Warsaw)
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of the What’s the Problem Represented to Be approach (WPR), a tool of policy analysis developed by the Australian political scientist Carol Bacchi to examine the discursive representations of council tenants’ participation in connection with the inclusion of council housing tenants from the Jazdów Estate in the decision-making process relating to local housing policy in Warsaw. The article identifies two discursive representations of council tenants’ participation: (1) council tenants as an expected passive audience in top-down policymaking and (2) the limited acceptance of the agency of council tenants in policymaking. It was found that in Warsaw - or at least in the case of Jazdów - the political and discursive interpretation of tenants’ participation is primarily associated with the act of informing and less often with public consultation or the co-production of housing policy.
Understanding Housing Development in New European Member States - a Housing Regime Approach
The paper will address the development of housing regimes in the new EU member states,introducing the analytical framework of a housing sector matrix to classifyforms of housing by tenure andintegration mechanism. Thus, ourhousing sector matrixcombines two common approaches: thestructure of housing provision (Ball and Harloe 1992) and the tenure-focused approach (Kemeny 1981, 1995). Starting from this rough typology of housing provisions, we also take further factors that have a major impact on the behaviour of stakeholders/actors into consideration, namely the legal/regulatory environment and the subsidy/tax system, to define the housing regimes. In its analysing of the development of the new member states the paperdifferentiates between global factors (economic development model, countries’ position in global economic structures, etc.) and local factors like the political/power structure, mainstream social ideology, the interplay betweendifferent stakeholders, etc. Institutional analyses (Bengtsson and Ruonavaara 2010) that take path-dependent factors into account are thus best able to address the process by which new housing regimes emerged in post-socialist countries and the degree to which we find convergence/divergence trends. The paper analyses three junctures in the development process after 1990: radical changes after the collapse of the old system; the development of the mortgage market and the regulation of the social sector at the turn of 2000; and reactions to the financial crisis of 2008. The paper concludes that the new member states are following the same trajectory despite their institutional differences.
Family Housing Pathways: An Introduction to the Study of Housing in Poland in Biographical and Historical Perspectives
The article describes the approach and method of Family Housing Pathways. This process of gathering and presenting data makes it possible to include the extended family’s housing resources, the management of these resources, and the transformations of households within a family. Twenty-eight Family Housing Pathways were gathered and collected as part of an assignment given to students as part of an undergraduate course on housing problems. The exercise shed light on recurring themes in the transformation of the housing system in Poland that influence individual and family management of housing resources. Even a sample of relatively privileged families demonstrates that housing is clearly a crucial dimension, especially in times of transition, e.g. in post-communist Poland after 1989. The Family Housing Pathways approach could be a promising tool as well as an approach that combines biographical and historical housing perspectives, without losing sight of concerns of a practical and ethical nature.
The Financial Instability of Housing First Families in the City of Brno – the Risk of the Recurrence of Homelessness
This article presents the partial research findings on financial instability as a risk factor for the recurrence of homelessness among families enrolled in a Housing First project in the City of Brno (Czech Republic). The project represents an evidence-based social innovation focused on ending families’ homelessness. The research was designed as a Randomised Controlled Trial study accompanied by a qualitative evaluation. The data were collected through questionnaires, individual interviews, and focus groups. In the results section we follow the logic of a financial stability model and conclude that research results on financial stability overall did not prove to be statistically significant on a short-term scale. In the discussion, we state that prolonged material poverty combined with the nature of the Czech housing benefit system and the experience of residential alienation could increase the risk of the recurrence of homelessness for families. A crisis financial fund was established in an effort to prevent this.
The Diverse Economies of Housing
This paper questions the uncritical transfer of neoliberal concepts, such as financialisation and overreliance on conceptual dichotomies like formal/informal, as the lenses through which to understand practices of housing provision and consumption in the post-communist space. To this end, it introduces the newly-established ‘diverse economies’ framework, which has been used elsewhere to reveal existing and possible alternatives to advanced capitalism. Applied to the Romanian case, the lens of diverse economic practices helps shed light on the ways in which the current housing system was historically constituted, with implications for how housing consumption is now stratified across some related housing typologies. The paper invites debate on the theoretical usefulness of the diverse economies framework to study housing phenomena, particularly its implications for understanding patterns of inequality and poverty, its potential to devise useful analytical categories, and its effect of directing attention to acts of resistance to neoliberal capitalism.
Informal Practices in Housing Financialisation: The Transformation of an Allotment Garden in Hungary
Although financialization of housing is well known global concept, in our paper we attempt to present how financialization produces new spaces and household practises in a Central Eastern European semi-pheripheral context. We approach this framework through an anthropological investigation, the transformation of allotment gardens what we consider as a combination of social and spatial transformations after the 1990s. In our case study we are curious how different waves of financialization influence the formation of the transformation of an informal housing space and how informal practices of the households could be an agency against financialization.
Building Partnerships for Social Housing: Growing Housing Needs and Effective Solutions for Albanian Cities
Partnerships have a long history in European social housing with a mixed degree of success. They are an emerging model in post-socialist countries driven by budgetary constraints, rapid privatisation of public housing, and pragmatic efforts to respond to a complex housing affordability crisis. This article evaluates the challenges and opportunities of a new partnership model implemented in Albania to provide social rental housing. The project, launched in 2009, involves a legally defined partnership between central and local governments, the private sector, and an international financial institution. It has doubled the amount of municipal rental housing, addressing the needs of low- and mid-income households in Albania through the construction of 1,138 rental apartments for 4,300 people in eight cities. The allocation process, although politically charged, has been targeted. The partnership has capitalised on efficiencies, sound fiscal management, and cost and quality control. Despite some construction delays and potential concerns related to future sustainability, we argue that the partnership model is effective and has an important learning and innovation role for the future provision of social housing in Albania as well as in other post-socialist countries in South-East Europe facing similar challenges.
Mind the Poorest: Social Housing Provision in Post-crisis Romania
This paper reflects on recent social housing developments in Romania. It understands social housing as rental social housing and affordable housing, a differentiation that is not made at the national level and introduces a sub-type of affordable housing, which is little documented in current research and is here termed ‘self-help affordable housing’. The paper looks at the legacy of socialist housing and social housing before and after the crisis. It makes an important claim that needs further investigation: current social housing provision in Romania overlooks the poorest households. This has implications for the country’s political leadership; the capacity for financial and institutional innovation; and wider strategies for policy integration.
Social Housing Provided by the Third Sector: The Slovak Experience
This paper aims to describe the legislation of the social housing system in Slovakia and to analyse innovations in social housing provision. The paper contributes to the literature on innovative social housing solutions provided by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), or so-called third sector. The analysis reveals the main factors that may contribute to the success or failure of social innovations in housing provision by NGOs. Long-term community work, the education of future residents, and the participation of future residents in the construction of their homes are the main factors that support the spread of innovations in social housing. On the other hand, lack of cooperation from the government at all levels and low funding are the biggest constraining factors on innovation in social housing in Slovakia.
Independent Evaluation of Social Housing Operations: Challenges and Lessons to Be Learned
In recent years, the Evaluation Department of the Council of Europe Development Bank has conducted a series of independent evaluations of CEB-financed operations in the social housing sector targeting special vulnerable groups. Building on evaluation evidence and experience, two strategic issues are presented: the high level of complexity of such operations and the various facets of their sustainability. This paper underlines the significant learning and accountability potential of evaluations of social housing operations. At the same time, it underscores the added value of a holistic approach to evaluation, in the face of a simplistic, but currently predominant, output-oriented focus during monitoring.
"Just Another" or A "Genuine" Change in Slovenian Social Housing Strategy?
Monopolistic Competition and Price Discrimination as a Development Company Strategy in the Primary Housing Market
Firms operating in the property sector use information asymmetry and the local monopoly to differentiate prices of housing units. Selling similar housing to purchasers at various prices allows them to maximize profits. The aim of this article is to analyze empirically the behavior of developers, that shape the market situation. It is necessary to depart from the classical analysis of enterprises that operate in a free and competitive market and produce typical, homogeneous goods. We analyze firms that produce heterogeneous goods and make individual trans-actions with each client. We use the hedonic regression to compare the theoretical and empirical prices per sq. m. of dwelling in the primary market in Warsaw and find significant dispersions. The price discrimination strategy, can be one of the explanations of the observed high, upward elasticity of prices.
Participatory Design Processes for the Development of Green Areas of Large-scale Housing: Case Studies from Budapest and Riga
Large housing estates (LHE) found in CEE countries can be seen as a legacy of socialism. Their endurance in these countries is still evident: the future of LHEs is substantially linked to their physical and social characteristics formed during socialism and their decline in status in Hungary and Latvia. The Western European practice of urban rehabilitation and community initiatives has gained more and more ground (sometimes literally) as of late. Our paper examines this phenomenon by analysing examples of converted green space of LHEs in two former socialist cities - a neglected and underused former “traffic park” in Budapest and a typical LHE “courtyard” overgrown and unused in Riga. We focus on the conversational process and the participatory approach of inhabitants and analyse how the redesigning of green areas involving local communities can lead to inhabitants feeling more at home in this housing structure.
Public Gardening and the Challenges of Neighbourhood Regeneration in Moscow
The popularity of public gardening in post-Soviet countries has arisen quite recently along with the penetration of neoliberal ideas. Public gardening not only visually improves the environment, but it also creates a range of public spaces and “other” places in which urban citizens can come together; eventually it could help to enhance the image of distressed neighbourhoods. Such community initiatives can be divided into sanctioned intervention and unauthorised intervention (“commoning”); unauthorised intervention is when residents are displeased with their surroundings and attempt to improve their environment in their own way. This paper explores the limitations of the practices of commoning as a source of regeneration and compares its cultural dimensions. In this paper I discuss the initial results of an ongoing research project focused on the expectations of people involved in these forms of participation. During this process, the differing typical understandings and perceptions of urban gardening in public and semi-public spaces will be applied.
“Green” Utopia of the Uralmash: Institutional Effects and Symbolic Meaning
The article examines ideological and institutional role of the “greening” policy in the Soviet urban planning practice of 1920-1930s. Relying on the example of the socialist city of Uralmash in Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) the author traces how the idea of the “green city” affected the development of the urban settlement in terms of its functional mechanism and symbolic transformation. By analyzing the logic of the Uralmash “green” policy and its main narratives he argues that successful improvement of the post-Soviet green zones depends not so much on the new urban city-planning initiatives as on the new symbols and meanings that could give a clear vision of these spaces in the current social and cultural context.
Urban Green Space in Transition: Historical parks and Soviet heritage in Arkhangelsk, Russia
Urban green space was largely underestimated as a potential for healthy and liveable environments in the state socialist countries. In Soviet Russia, green in the city was part of urban planning but more as a proclamation and mostly implemented in a top-down-manner. During postsocialist transformation, economic restructuring dwarfed the debate on urban nature and greening. Within last years, we see a change here: Urban nature for residential quality and well-being has become more relevant for people, their perceptions and daily practices. The paper analyses the development and main characteristics of urban green spaces in Arkhangelsk, Russia. It discusses the importance of urban nature for human well-being, housing and its contribution to social cohesion and local identity. The paper argues that urban greening is not only a planning tool to create liveable and healthy urban environments but also an important strategy in awareness raising and public involvement activities.
The Apartment with the Best Floor Plan Layout: Architects versus Non-architects
This study examined differences in the floor-plan preferences of architects and laypersons with no architectural education or experience (non-architects). Qualitative data on floor-plan preferences were collected using interviews and an online survey. The floor plans used in the online survey were differentiated primarily by spatial arrangements and included the original layout of a socialist prefab apartment and two contemporary redesigns of the space. The results showed significant differences in the floor-plan preferences of architects and non-architects. Topological properties of layout and a required level of privacy were identified as key factors influencing the between-group differences. Architects and non-architects disagreed in particular over how the public and private zones were defined and arranged in the apartment layouts. From the perspective of architectural practice, understanding non-architects’ preferences can decrease the uncertainty in new product development for an unknown end user and increase residential satisfaction.
The Role of Housing Assets in Shaping the New Welfare Regime in Transition Countries: The Case of Hungary
This paper looks at housing strategy in a wider social and economic context and argues that a household’s (class) position in society depends on important life decisions, one of the most important of which is a person’s employment strategy and preparation for the period of retirement (pensions), which is related to housing decisions. The main context of these decisions is the welfare regime, but also a country’s economic structure (varieties of capitalism) and housing system (tax and subsidy elements of programmes). However, as the paper argues, these systems are also changing in relation to the macro effect of individual decisions.