Sustainable urban development? Low-cost housing challenges in South Africa

Low-cost housing provision has been a major focus of government in post-apartheid urban South Africa. While successes can be noted, there is growing concern regarding the social and environmental sustainability of housing programs and the impacts upon both the surrounding environment and human health. Utilizing key informant interviews, survey research, Census data and documentary review, this essay identifies the major impediments to a sustainable low-cost housing provision in urban South Africa. The essay also points to hopeful signs in new policy directions, particularly attention to health issues and informal settlement upgrade programs. However, the major obstacles to a sustainable low-cost housing process, including macro-economic conditions, enduring historical legacies of race and class, the scale and rapidity of urban growth and institutional challenges show little indication of abating.     

我国个人住房贷款风险因素分析

我国个人住房贷款的风险正日益积累却没有得到充分重视 ,可能成为未来银行不良贷款增加的重要因素之一。本文旨在对我国个人住房贷款的风险因素进行分析 ,以期为寻求防范风险的机制提供基础。     

论预售商品房权属之博弈

商品房预售在我国的房地产市场中已经成为主要的销售形式,而商品房预售的特殊性质决定了预售商品房上的权利主体较多,各权利主体均对预售商品房主张权利并由此产生争议。本文从司法实践中预售商品房上权利主体之争出发,探析预售商品房权属发生争议的原因,厘清预售商品房从开发公司建造房屋到预购人完成不动产物权登记期间,不同时间段预售商品房上权利主体及其所享有的权利性质,使各权利人明确自身权益并进行有效的权利救济。     

The Role of the Housing Allowance for the Elderly in Norway: Views of Recipients

This article concerns the housing allowance, an economic benefit provided to low-income households and the elderly in Norway. Ensuring a high quality of housing for the elderly has been a priority in the development of the Norwegian welfare state. This article is based on results from a qualitative study among elderly recipients of a housing allowance. The study shows that while these recipients viewed the financial support the allowance offered as crucial, they still felt impoverished. The study raises some questions about whether the housing allowance scheme encourages high-quality housing.     

Fear and Urban Planning in Ordinary Cities: From Theory to Practice

The paper complements Abu-Orf's theory about violent settings by setting out a theory of fear in urban planning in ordinary urban contexts around three arguments: spatialization of fear; (modernist) spatialities and the encounter and political economies of urban fear. The three theoretical arguments are used to re-frame the planning history of Chelas, an affordable housing district in Lisbon, Portugal, and debate the way fear shapes, and is shaped in turn by, planning practice. Confirming that (growing) fear in ordinary urban contexts is not just an effect of the contemporary organization of cities, the paper argues for a theorization of fear that combines global (hegemonic) and a local (discursive/contingent) perspectives in the theorization of urban fear, and advocates for the need to put fear, and its capacity to create a crisis in urban policy, at the heart of planners' agendas.     

Shared Ownership and Affordable Housing: A Political Solution in Search of a Planning Justification?

Planners in England routinely include shared ownership (SO) housing in the affordable housing element of new developments. Government policies in a number of European countries have also backed intermediate housing market mechanisms as a solution to housing affordability. The rhetoric of such mechanisms makes claims about its social progressiveness, its role in facilitating socio-economic mobility and helping people move from rented accommodation into full owner-occupation. SO schemes in England have been justified on the grounds of being transitional tenures and planners have accepted SO on this basis. However, given the paucity of rigorous empirical work, there is a concern that this is a policy based on assumption rather than evidence. This paper delineates existing knowledge, clarifies dimensions of the intermediate housing market and highlights underlying policy issues based on a large data-set of shared owners in England. Our analysis indicates that SO may not be appropriately classified as affordable housing, and justifiable policy requires further evidence.     

The effects of rent restructuring on social housing in English rural areas

This paper discusses the impact of central government's rent restructuring policy on social housing in rural areas in England. It examines the effect that restructuring will have on the rents set by social landlords in a set of case study areas then considers some of the likely impacts on affordability and on new investment in rural social housing. One of the primary aims of rent restructuring policy is to reduce unjustifiable differences between the rents of similar dwellings in the local authority and Registered Social Landlord sectors locally. This aim seems likely to be achieved. In doing so, it is likely that affordability will be reduced in the local authority sector but enhanced for tenants of some RSLs. However, the reduction in real RSL rents that improve affordability may further constrain RSLs’ ability to invest in new social housing in rural areas. The paper concludes that rent restructuring by itself will not materially improve the housing prospects of the less well off in rural areas.     

广东省住房保障适度水平分析

住房保障在民生问题中越来越突出,也成为人们越来越关注的一个问题。文章借鉴穆怀中教授的社会保障适度适度水平的测算模型,构造一个住房保障适度水平测算模型。并借鉴发达国家住房保障经验数据对各模型系数进行估计,结合具体情况得出广东省住房保障适度水平区间为0.83%~2.21%。而广东省住房保障水平仅为0.2%,远未达到适度水平下限,政府对住房保障的投入力度远远不够。随着经济水平的不断发展,广东省需要不断加大对中低收入群体的住房保障力度,提高住房保障水平。     

Privatising social housing in Taiwan

This article first reviews how the concept of privatisation has been referred to in the current restructuring of the social housing system, especially in the case of the UK. The term 'privatisation' is then examined in greater detail and its wider meaning is discussed. By using the network approach, privatisation in relation to housing can be understood in terms of the changing combinations of agents involved in providing social housing, which gives rise to the commodified impact on the distribution of social housing. By using the privatisation process of social housing in Taiwan as an example, three distinct combinations in terms of providing social housing are identified. With an increasing number of social housing units being provided by the marketised social housing model where private agents control the process of providing social housing, along with more market rules being involved in the provision and the partial removal of means tests in relation to the distribution of social housing, the privatisation of social housing development in Taiwan is having a major impact on equity.     

物业股权实现途径之理性思考

在我国现有的法律框架下,实现业主无偿获取物业公司股权,并由业主作为惟一股东组织和运作物业公司,以达到物业自治的目的,尚存在诸多法律上的难题.无论由开发商投资设立公司,还是业主利用共有公用的物业财产自设物业公司,均存在一定的障碍.因此,物业股权的设想并不具有现实意义.