# **Rental Housing Supply**

# **_Supply Pattern – Volume and Quality_**

_Rental Housing Supply Volumes._ Most available official statistics for ECA transition countries deal only with ownership, and not with tenure pattern, although in some cases census includes tenure questions.<sup>21</sup> A focus on ownership alone tends to systematically under-estimate rental tenure, because of the significance of individual private rental housing, subletting, and sharing. Such data sources are therefore not useful for analyzing the tenure choice and housing needs of young and socially vulnerable households, information fundamental for housing policy formulation.

Analysis by external experts that could identify tenure from census data indirectly is rendered difficult through high barriers to access to the original census data. Barriers include complex administrative procedures, a general lack of public sector transparency, and sensitivity to the “politics” of the results—for example, in terms of ethnic structure in countries where there has been ethnic conflict.

An alternative way to estimate the size of rental housing stock is to look at reported household tenure status, rather than classification of physical dwellings. The survey data reported in Table 3 below show a non-owner-occupied housing sector of significant scale in the case countries. The share varies from 4.3 percent in Romania to 36.2 percent in Russia. The sector is not confined to public rental housing remaining after the apartment privatizations of the 1990s. In fact, the public sector is now surpassed by the combined private rental and rent-free (often against in-kind payment) sectors in Lithuania, Romania, and Serbia. The private rental sector is particularly significant in Poland (16.8 percent of households) and Lithuania (12.2 percent), followed at a great distance by Serbia (4 percent), Russia (3.6 percent), and Armenia (3 percent).

Moreover, in two of the six studied countries the public rental sector is significant: Poland has 30.6 percent rentals, with the private rental sector (16.8 percent) dominating the public rental sector (13.8 percent), and Russia has 35 percent rental, with the public rental sector (31.4 percent) dominating the private rental sector (3.6 percent). Poland did not embark on across-theboard top-down massive privatization, leaving it to municipalities to define and implement their privatization strategies. The country restituted ownership of a substantial volume of prewar rental buildings, and introduced an active, heavily subsidized construction program for private rental apartment buildings and an extended housing allowance program to cover private rental housing. Unintentionally, privatization of public apartments in Russia (31.4 percent of stock) has remained incomplete, as many households have chosen to hold off on executing privatization decisions. The public rental sector is presently marginalized in Armenia, Lithuania, and Serbia and almost eradicated in Romania.

> 21  The decennial censuses in some cases provide better information. The 2001 Armenian census makes it possible to identify tenure status. The 2002 Romanian census included a question on tenure status where the 1992 census did not; however, official analysis of the 2002 census has been incomplete. A positive example is Poland, where census and other housing sector statistics usually include tenure form statistics.

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