Swedish housing policies and homelessness

Abstract: The housing market in Sweden today has submitted to the rules of commercial markets. The de-mand is rising while the supply is decreasing; pushing rents to go up. The interest in building apartment blocks is low due to high costs and low revenue. Prior to 1991 private actors was encouraged to enter the housing market through tax revenues and loan subventions and through Public-Private Partnerships the provision of housing, even for the most economically vulnerable citizens, was guaranteed. Housing policies designed to prevent homelessness and increase living standards for all citizens were introduced in 1945 and did not change significantly until 1991. State support became reduced; and the housing market adapted to New Public Management which resulted in increased rents and increasing numbers of eviction. Homelessness became a great concern for the municipalities, but since previous existing partnerships had been closed down due to policy changes providing housing became hard. A secondary housing market was created and placed the homeless under strict regulations and hard conditions. This thesis aims to show how housing policies in Sweden have developed since 1945 until 2013 through the study of homelessness, showing that little happened between 1945 and 1991. 1991 the State had withdrawn from the Swedish housing market; leaving the regulation to the free market of capitalism where economically vulnerable citizens no longer were accepted, causing a Secondary housing market to arise. The secondary housing market took over where the state previously acted as a mediator; assigning tenants to landlords for them to sign firsthand contracts. Through the Secondary housing market the State now became the middle hand of the contract carrying the financial risk.