Housing: The Essential Foundations provides a comprehensive introduction to housing studies. This topical text is essential reading for students embarking on degree and diploma courses in housing, surveying, town planning and other related subjects. Professionals within these fields will also find the book valuable as a source of up-to-date information and data. Uniquely multi-disciplinary and including a wealth of illustrations and examples, this book focuses on key topics which include: * equal opportunities and housing organisations * town planning and housing development * housing management, design and development * economics of housing * management and organisation * environmental health and housing * property, housing law, policy-making and politics * housing policy and finance prior to and post Thatcherism * future policy issues under the Labour government post 1997 Throughout the authors stress the importance of housing market activity that accords with good planning practice, legislation, democratic decision-making, economy and efficiency. In introducing the many diverse aspects of housing within a single volume, this book provides the essential foundations for the study of this multi-disciplinary subject. Paul Balchin, Gregory Bull, Pauline Forrester, David Isaac, R.Shean McConnell John O'Leary, Maureen Rhoden, Jane Weldon all at Univeristy of Greenwich, UK and Mark Pawlowski, University

Laying a solid foundation is a crucial first step in building a new home or adding a new room. Learn how in this complete foundations instructions manual.

An examination of America's housing crisis by the leading progressive housing activists in the country.

Environmental Health and Housing provides both students and professionals with comprehensive coverage of issues relating to both social and private housing. The book includes basic technical information for completing house surveys, detailed yet clear backgrounds to and explanations of applying relevant legislation, and discussion of current policy and strategy. All this is backed up with case studies and examples of how theory and law are put into practice in real situations. The minefield of overlapping legislation and legal issues are clearly presented as flow charts and tables. Unique in its coverage, clearly illustrated and covering such diverse topics as housing defects, caravan sites, asylum seekers and social exclusion, Environmental Health and Housing is an essential purchase for all students and professionals in the housing sector.

In Housing the New Russia, Jane R. Zavisca examines Russia’s attempts to transition from a socialist vision of housing, in which the government promised a separate, state-owned apartment for every family, to a market-based and mortgage-dependent model of home ownership. In 1992, the post-Soviet Russian government signed an agreement with the United States to create the Russian housing market. The vision of an American-style market guided housing policy over the next two decades. Privatization gave socialist housing to existing occupants, creating a nation of homeowners overnight. New financial institutions, modeled on the American mortgage system, laid the foundation for a market. Next the state tried to stimulate mortgages—and reverse the declining birth rate, another major concern—by subsidizing loans for young families. Imported housing institutions, however, failed to resonate with local conceptions of ownership, property, and rights. Most Russians reject mortgages, which they call "debt bondage," as an unjust "overpayment" for a good they consider to be a basic right. Instead of stimulating homeownership, privatization, combined with high prices and limited credit, created a system of "property without markets." Frustrated aspirations and unjustified inequality led most Russians to call for a government-controlled housing market. Under the Soviet system, residents retained lifelong tenancy rights, perceiving the apartments they inhabited as their own. In the wake of privatization, young Russians can no longer count on the state to provide their house, nor can they afford to buy a home with wages, forcing many to live with extended family well into adulthood. Zavisca shows that the contradictions of housing policy are a significant factor in Russia’s falling birth rates and the apparent failure of its pronatalist policies. These consequences further stack the deck against the likelihood that an affordable housing market will take off in the near future.

The privately rented housing market has largely catered for young, mobile people and students since it was deregulated in the UK. In this volume, key writers provide timely insights into this rapidly evolving market. This volume is based on new, original research which brings together specialists in housing policy and legal studies, with their common and increasingly interdependent knowledge base about the privately rented sector and its future direction. The collection opens with an overview of the historical context and recent changes to the sector, such as the rapid and continued expansion of the buy-to-let market, followed by a discussion of the factors shaping the contemporary market. The contributors show how the new regulatory environment is opening a series of issues with significant potential to affect (and potentially damage) the market. The volume will interest academics and students in social and public policy, law and housing studies, as well as law practices and housing authorities.