Two Contradictions and the Shape of Public Housing to Come : A Review of the Current State of the Municipal Public Housing Sector in Sweden

Malmö universitet, Institutionen för Urbana Studier (US) Malmö universitet, Institute for Urban Research (IUR) 2024

Municipal public housing is one of the pillars of the Swedish national housing regime, which is often understood asbeing universal in the sense that the national housing policy is directed towards the whole population, not merelyfiltering for financially vulnerable households. Much research has analysed this rather unique housing sector,focusing on how incremental policy changes during the last four decades have changed the role and significanceof public housing. This paper aims to give a current review of the state of public housing, and builds on existingresearch and a quantitative analysis of recent data on housing construction and socioeconomic development. Itidentifies two contradictions of central concern for contemporary public housing and sets those contradictions inrelation to the historical aims of the national housing regime. First, it analyses the large number of public housingunits constructed during the last decade, which is contrasted with a parallel trend of decreased public housingstock. Second, the paper identifies a “dual selectivity”, where public housing on the one hand has turned towardswell-off households through strict requirements on new tenants and expensive newly constructed housing; and onthe other hand, an increasing residualization implying that increasingly the public housing sector is the sole optionfor low-income households who cannot access other tenures. Given these contradictions and the acute demand forhousing solutions for households with low income, the article concludes with a discussion of the shape of Swedishpublic housing to come.

public housing; social housing; housing policy; housing construction; residualization; Human Geography; Kulturgeografi; Article in journal; info:eu-repo/semantics/article; text

10.18261.tfb.7.1.6

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0000-0001-5896-2016
doi:10.18261/tfb.7.1.6
1457590989

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