Introduction:Social Housing in Europe

This chapter discusses the structure of the book that provides an overview of the state of social housing in Europe in 2013. The book is divided into two parts. First, there are chapters about social housing in individual countries, which focus on how the system actually works in practice and what the current sociopolitical and economic contexts may mean for the future developments of the sector. There are sections on countries with large, medium and small social housing sectors. The chapters in the second part of the book address some of the most important themes in current social housing research, including history, finance and law, and the relationship between social housing and the private sector