The particular contribution of this chapter is that it creates a new context in which to reassess the benefits and drawbacks of the changes in housing finance over the last two decades that have been widely debated in both academic and political arenas. The comparative experiences of the four countries examined here – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany – underscore the differences in the mechanisms they have used to achieve the goal of providing adequate housing stocks as well as the different ways in which housing finance in each country has been transformed. Nevertheless, the paper finds a strong commonality in the reduction in government support for housing as a social good in all four countries. Moreover, it describes the erosion in households' access to adequate and affordable housing that has already occurred, arguing that a continuation of current finance systems is certain to further reduce access for low-income families and increase financial and lifecycle risks for most families.

While the paper discusses governments' withdrawal from their former role in supplying affordable housing, the primary focus is, as noted, on changes in housing finance, and the commonality in the experience of these four countries is deregulation. The authors provide an especially useful analysis of the ways in which risks have been shifted from financial institutions to households – making the point that risk has only been shifted, not reduced – and that the increased risk for households can only lead to a symmetrical increase in risk for financial institutions.