Economic Problem with Housing
Housing represents one of the largest national assets of any country while housing provisions represent one of the most sensitive areas of public activity. Solving the housing problem is a vitally important objective during the lifetime of an individual or household. One of the most important goals of every country is, therefore, to guarantee the means that enable its citizens to acquire appropriate housing. Each society must have some means for allocating housing to its population, for example, the distribution of housing to social groups and households at given locations. Housing is allocated either through the private market, on a competitive basis in terms of the values people attach to housing and their ability to pay, or through the public sector, where governments, housing officials or some community group, distribute housing according to individual and collective needs. The market for housing can be defined as a “set of institutions and procedures” for bringing together housing supply and demand (buyers and sellers, renters and landlords, builders and consumers) for purposes of exchanging resources, the resource being housing services.