WS-07: Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance Victorian Auditor-General, (2010) Access to Social Housing, Report, Office of VAG

Since Dutch housing associations are independent organisations which have to take their own decisions on their housing stock, many housing associations develop asset management plans to secure that their portfolio meets company goals and market demand. However, in practice decisions of housing associations are often not the direct result of these plans, but of incidents at the neighbourhood level or of emerged opportunities. Next to that, housing associations nowadays do not only focus on the quality of their own housing stock, but also on the physical, economical and social quality of the whole neighbourhood, which implies cooperation with a wide variety of local actors. Therefore, housing associations in the Netherlands are increasingly taking decisions on their housing stock on the scale of the neighbourhood, as opposed to the scale of the portfolio. In taking these decisions, they take into account the characteristics of the area and the plans and wishes of other actors present in the areas. This way of decision-making combines various planning methods, of which the rational and collaborative planning methods seem to most important. In this paper the results of a case study of a housing association working in an urban renewal neighbourhood are presented. The planning process of this housing associations will be described and explained using theories of planning