The Experiences of Public Rental Housing Policy of the Advanced Countries and Korea’s Policy Direction

Abstract

Since the end of the World War II, many advanced countries have developed public rental housing not only as a residential safety net but also as an active welfare policy. However, after 30-40 years of expansion, most of the advanced countries have reduced or retreated from public rental housing policies due to the development of the private housing market and financial constraints. On the other hand, Korea started its public rental housing policy late compared to the advanced countries and is still expanding it. Korea's public rental housing policy differs from the advanced countries in that housing market instability and the mass supply of housing to resolve it are the most important policy drivers. This paper tried to consider Korea's position, characteristics, and policy tasks in light of the changes in public rental housing policy in the advanced countries. Considering the experiences of the advanced countries, it is reasonable to assume that the quantitative target of our public rental housing policy is 10% of all households, and it is necessary to maintain the Korean characteristic of diversifying the number of tenants. The relationship between housing benefits and public rental housing needs to be established urgently. In addition, pointing out that hasty expectations are reflected in the current public rental housing statistics in Korea, this paper proposed to classify Jeonse public rental as one of the rental subsidy systems.