Bostadsbrist eller begreppsförvirring - en studie av tjänstepersoners och aktörers värderande av begreppet bostadsbrist

In the media there is a lot of talk about the shortage of housing. The purpose of this paper is to understand what the concept of housing shortage means and to examine how officials, both public and private define the concept. The study also investigates what shortcomings that interviewed informants identify with the Swedish housing system. The study is conducted with a qualitative approach and the material consists of semi-structured interviews with actors of the Swedish housing industry. A literature study of reports from public actors to provide the reader with a background for what is said in the interviews. The concepts of supply and demand as defined by the economist Gregory Mankiw is used to define what shortage mean and the political scientist Bo Bengtssons theory about the housing markets characteristics and how housing shortage is defined is used to explain why it is hard to define what shortage means in this context. The results from the interviews and the literature shows that the concept of housing shortage is not a generic one and that it depends on in which context one studies the concept or whom one asks. The conclusions that can be drawn from the study is that many actors think that the concept of housing shortage is very hard to define and that the solutions cannot be one but that there has to be several different with different aims and approaches