How does housing policy in Australia compare to those in The Netherlands and Germany?

Dr Marietta Haffner will present a lecture on the very different Dutch and German housing systems and policies. The Netherlands developed the largest social rental sector in the Western world, while Germany developed the largest private rental sector. The lecture will present an account of the contemporary housing market – tenures, prices and rents – and related to an analysis of policy and particular interventions. Current policy has its origin in policy choices made by governments decades ago.

Professor Kath Hulse (Swinburne) and Dr Andrew Hollows (AHURI) will reflect on the insights that this comparative European research provides for the study of the Australia which can be described as an owner occupier society.

Dr Marietta Haffner, an economist by origin, has more than two decades of experience in conducting European comparative studies that cover housing finance, policy, taxation and affordability. OTB Research for the Built Environment, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft is her home base. She has cooperated on projects with Curtin and RMIT universities in Australia, in Belgium (within Steunpunt Wonen) and in the UK (De Montfort University and Cambridge University). She has been appointed a Principal Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, and a Visiting Fellow Cambridge University Centre for Housing and Planning, UK.

Image by Andrés Nieto Porras via Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0