A Comparative Look at Social Housing in Developed and Developing Countries

Provision of housing is vital to all the members of any country, and even a fundamental right of every person in a society to be housed properly. While the state has a primary role to play in reallocation of resources to meet the needs of the majority and ensure ‘public good', the economic status of developing nations has made this a complex issue. The developing world has increasingly come to rely on voluntary action, especially the social enterprise movements. There are marked differences in the approaches to tackling the social housing issue in the developed and developing world, from the point of view of the role played by social enterprises in this area. This chapter takes a comparative look at the role played by social entrepreneurs and social enterprises in the area of social housing in the developing and developed world by looking at some specific examples and case studies and concludes that in the developing world the social enterprise movement has a stronger role to play.