Desperately seeking public housing

people stay because they want to, including clear contractual terms, just-cause evictions and predictable rent development, is not seen as something inherently bad by all types of private investors. Predictability and attractiveness for broader groups of households reduces tenant turnover and management costs and hence increase profit. This is something that could be contemplated and discussed more broadly in many home-owner countries, especially when there is no wish to go as far as vacancy control, but focus is on softer forms of predictability. The ever-present question of who we prioritize in housing policy, must also be answered. Phillips points to the difficulty of balancing interests and that sometimes choices are so difficult that no choice is made. When it comes to subsidy, Philipps states that ‘market-rate and mixed-income construction should serve as many people as it possibly can, preserving public funds to help those with the greatest need.’ Phillips is clear in that those that are not reached by the market need to be prioritized and subsidized. Quite a few German cities seem to take this for granted and prioritize and subsidize housing in the lower, and sometimes also the moderate, income brackets. The efficient way of doing it is however where detail is needed, along with clear standpoints of balancing wanted and unwanted effects of subsidy as it always creates some inefficiencies, for example lock-in effects. In Sweden, with its ‘good housing for all’ ideal, prioritization becomes a very painful exercise which often results in no choices being made. One question mark that remains in me after finishing the book is why the alternative to private profitmaximization needs to be more public sector. What about civil society? In countries like Denmark, Germany and Sweden civil society initiatives have become integral parts of the housing system (partly due to political patronage). Yet today, the future of some of them is far from certain. Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see if more civil society initiativeswill spring out of frustrationwith limited politics. In this text, I have only managed to touch on a few thoughts raised by Philipps’ interesting book. This will be a book to come back to, partly as a sort of affordable housing dictionary, but most of all as a start of interesting and much needed discussions.