Socioeconomics of Housing

The new Socioeconomics of Housing department was established in 2009 and continues in activities of the Socioeconomics of Housing team that was a part of the Economic sociology department since 2000. In the beginning, it focused on studying housing expenditures (housing consumption), but gradually its activity was extended to take in other housing research areas. Its main research activities now relate to both the social and the economic aspects of housing and thus include such diverse topics as housing attitudes, housing preferences, housing affordability, international comparisons of housing policy and social housing systems, and econometric simulations of policy reforms, like rent deregulation, the introduction of housing allowance and social housing, housing finance, housing market efficiency, and house price indices. The members of the department are regular participants in the international conference of the ENHR (European Network for Housing Research), and with the support of the Ministry for Regional Development they organised an international seminar on ‘Social Housing in Europe 2000’. In 2009, the department will take part in organisation of the ENHR conference in Prague.

All news, department members profiles and full text papers can be found at seb.soc.cas.cz.

Department publishes the journal Critical Housing Analysis (ISSN 2336-2839, www.housing-critical.com).

Current projects:

• The Application of Sociological Methods to Detect Housing Market Disequilibrium. Critical & Context-Sensitive Housing Research Methodology (online)