Two Contradictions and the Shape of Public Housing to Come. A Review of the Current State of the Municipal Public Housing Sector in Sweden

Municipal public housing is one of the pillars of the Swedish national housing regime, which is often understood as being universal in the sense that the national housing policy is directed towards the whole population, not merely filtering for financially vulnerable households. Much research has analysed this rather unique housing sector, focusing on how incremental policy changes during the last four decades have changed the role and significance of public housing. This paper aims to give a current review of the state of public housing, and builds on existing research and a quantitative analysis of recent data on housing construction and socioeconomic development. It identifies two contradictions of central concern for contemporary public housing and sets those contradictions in relation to the historical aims of the national housing regime. First, it analyses the large number of public housing units constructed during the last decade, which is contrasted with a parallel trend of decreased public housing stock. Second, the paper identifies a “dual selectivity”, where public housing on the one hand has turned towards well-off households through strict requirements on new tenants and expensive newly constructed housing; and on the other hand, an increasing residualization implying that increasingly the public housing sector is the sole option for low-income households who cannot access other tenures. Given these contradictions and the acute demand for housing solutions for households with low income, the article concludes with a discussion of the shape of Swedish public housing to come.