How competitive is social rental housing in England and the Netherlands?

In an attempt to promote efficiency and effectiveness many governments in Europe have pursued social housing organizations in recent years to be more market orientated and more competitive. This paper compares the competitiveness of social rental housing and social housing organizations in England and the Netherlands. Both countries have relatively large social rental sectors and in both countries government policy is targeted to expose social housing organizations more to market pressure. On the other hand there are differences between the social housing organizations in both countries, regarding financial independency, customers and services supplied. In order to determine the degree of competitiveness of the social rental sectors in both countries we use an evaluative framework based on economic concepts like rivalry, risk and choice. Within this framework we focus on competition within social housing and between private housing and social housing from the perspectives of both the consumers and the suppliers of social and private housing.