Housing Income and Subsidies

<p>One of the original, if unstated, objectives of the Housing Finance Review initiated in 1975 was to provide a systematic comparison of the distribution of housing subsidies across categories of households differentiated by tenure and other characteristics. However, the technical volumes which accompanied the Housing Policy green paper (HMSO, 1977) largely avoid this issue by concentrating on current financial flows rather than some more relevant concept of the impact of government intervention in the housing market. This is, perhaps, understandable since a consistent analysis of housing subsidies requires that we first define a 'neutral' system of taxation and housing finance as a baseline before proceeding to assess the effect of any particular set of policies.</p>