Varieties of East-Central European housing tenure structure: The long life of a north-south cleavage line

Abstract

East-Central Europe is often perceived in the literature discussing housing as an area unified by its common state-socialist legacy. Based on data covering developments in housing tenure and housing policy in the past 140 years in seven East-Central European countries, we trace the long history of a division between a northern (Germany, Poland and Czechia) and southern (Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and partially Slovakia) group of countries in terms of their support for and share of housing in collective (cooperative and nonprofit rental) versus private ownership. We find that the initially less urbanized and industrialized southern group started out with a weak cooperative tradition, focused state support on home ownership under state socialism and privatized more radically post-1990. The paper argues that differences between the two groups, persisting despite the number of transformative changes affecting the region, are rooted in different housing policy choices made by (predecessor) states before and following World War I.