This chapter evaluates the Dutch social housing model and its impact on the quality of neighbourhoods. It describes the theoretical debate on the link between affordable housing and planning and the different models for social rental housing. The chapter looks at the changing link between social housing and urban renewal and how social housing has changed from being a solution into being a problem and focuses on the outcome of the Dutch social rental model by looking at the composition of the population of the large cities in the Randstad. There is an ongoing debate in housing studies on the sustainability of such a ‘unitary rental sector’. This means a social rental sector for a broad target group that is in competition with the commercial rental sector. In 2015 a new Housing Act came into force that implied some fundamental changes for urban policy: more targeting of lower-income groups and less emphasis on the urban dimension.@en

As cities grow and more dense communities are built, the meaning of homeownership changes. In a highly urbanized future, it will be critical to know how to make high density housing in condominium ownership sustainable and resilient. A sector of social housing policies in Latin America subsidizes the provision of affordable housing for low and middle income homeownership. A network of professionals, both from private and public sector are involved in this process. In the context of Bogota, Colombia and Quito, Ecuador, dwellings for homeownership are built in multifamily and collective arrangements of land and architecture. The property system involved in these urban housing solutions is the condominium regime. The problem is that affordable condominiums, particularly those subsidized by national housing policy deteriorate over time. The common property elements of housing complexes or buildings are suffering from serious lack of maintenance. Why are low-income homeowners not taking care of their properties? How can we better understand the problem of lack of maintenance of the affordable condominiums? Tenure forms are one of the most important institutions in housing policy and research. This comparative housing research looks at condominiums as a private common property resource and applies Ostrom´s institutional framework (Ostrom, 1990, 2005) to understand both formal and informal institutions involved in management and governance of the affordable condominiums. In condominium housing, owning a home of one’s own implies a more complex configuration of rights and obligations than just the possession of a single unit. The institutions of condominium housing studied in this thesis make a significant contribution to theory and housing policy and positions Latin American social housing policy in a global perspective.@en

Governments in urbanising Latin America encourage low-income homeownership. In practice, this means that low-income urban families become owners of units in condominium properties. While the homeownership dream may thus be achieved, difficulties with maintenance can lead to deterioration. This paper considers condominiums as collective action arenas and applies the Institutional Analysis and Development framework of Ostrom (2005 Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding institutional diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.) to explore the links between the characteristics of (1) the communities, (2) governance and (3) the physical environment with the perceived level of maintenance (PML). Using data from a survey of 414 households carried out in 2014, we compare the circumstances of low-income condominiums in Bogota (Colombia) and Quito (Ecuador), two cities with similar housing policies but different horizontal property laws. Our central hypothesis is that the more modern law in Colombia enforces self-organisation and therefore better maintenance outcomes. In line with our hypothesis, the results demonstrate that the maintenance level in Bogota is higher than in Quito. Contrary to our hypothesis, participating in self-organisation in Bogota had a negative effect on PML, while in Quito the effect was positive. This indicates that the law matters but the relationship between the formal arrangements required by law, self-organisation and maintenance outcomes is more complicated than expected.@en