The Project - Summary

Title:

The Importance of Housing Systems in Safeguarding Social Cohesion in Europe.

Acronym:

SOCOHO

Work programme:

EESD, 1.4. IHP, Towards Social Cohesion in Europe

Objectives:

The project was to examine the relationship between the problems of social cohesion and the housing systems exemplified in the following six member states: Austria, France, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Four principal questions were posed for each of the states:

To what extent do the various housing systems alleviate or aggravate the increasing risks of poverty faced by households?
To what extent do they take into account the current transformation of family and demographic structures?
To what extent do they alleviate or aggravate the dangers in many urban areas arising from increasing social and ethnic diversity?
What housing provision measures could lead to a reduction in the problems resulting from increasing risks of poverty, the transformation of family and demographic structures and increasing social and ethnic inequality?

Research in the individual states provided high-quality comparable data as a basis for a summary with politically relevant conclusions in an overall European context.

Timeplan:

The official commencement date of the project was 01/09/2001 and it ran for 3 years

Partners:

Funding:

European Commission, Research Directorate-General

Abstract:

The SOCOHO project funded under the Fifth Framework Programme and, specifically, the key action for the improvement of socio-economic knowledge base, was intended to research which challenges to the housing systems of the individual countries result from the current crisis of social cohesion and how the various housing systems are responding to these challenges by international comparison.

The approach adopted by the SOCOHO project combines a comparative analysis of the European Household Panel data with supplementary research in six selected countries (Austria, France, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom). The following report presents the results at EU-15 level.

The SOCOHO findings show that the housing systems of the EU member states are very important factors in the maintenance of social cohesion. They fulfil this role by exerting decisive influence on the level of risk of poverty, the extent of social and ethnic segregation, and the dealing of households with the current transformation of family and demographic structures.

At the same time the results from this report also show that the framework conditions created in the last decades on a European level clearly limit the options open to the member states in the area of housing policy: On the one hand a restrictive budget policy was enforced, which led to reductions in housing subsidies, while on the other hand, the European Union established an agreement of role allocation between the market, the state and the social economy, which increasingly takes the public authorities' legitimation for an efficient regulation of the housing markets. In this way, besides the economic basis, the political basis of the housing policy was also undermined. Thus the European Union (in sharp contrast to the pathos of the European Social Policy Agenda) reduced the ability of the national housing systems to secure social cohesion.

To re-establish the action potential of the national housing policies, a new definition of the role allocation between market, state and social economy on a European level would be necessary. Therefore, in spite of the lack of a formal EU housing mandate, the strengthening of the national housing policies to secure social cohesion would have deep consequences on a European level.