**1. Introduction**

Housing policy is one of the most important areas of social policy. It is a mirror of social deficiencies and changes. Housing is bound to a specific location in space. In this context, when considering whether to invest, households are influenced by several factors: the availability of jobs, the income of households, interest rate of housing credits, the labour market status and the amount of indebtedness.

The Slovak Republic is one of the Central European countries whose economies were centrally planned until 1989. The main characteristic of transition countries is the transition state of their economies—transitive stage—from a centrally controlled system to market economy.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Until 1989, housing policy in the Slovak Republic was centralised. Moreover, the state provided housing for all citizens. The state provided building construction centrally, variedly subsidised all forms of housing (mainly subsidising the price of services related to housing, as prices of energies and water), ran housing stock, especially state and cooperative flats, and centralised the administrative system of the redistribution of flats. Therefore, political changes in the Slovak Republic after 1989 required several fundamental changes in the field of institutional arrangement of the public administration, as well as legislative changes. Similarly, as in other fields of economics, also in the sphere of housing, transformation from the rationing system of housing to the system based on the respected market economy was initiated.

The difference between housing policies of particular countries is in many cases specific with the overall distinct acting of a state in the housing market. Such a predominantly "geographic border" dividing different housing systems goes between the north and south of Europe. The Northern EU member states (Denmark, Germany) are characterised by a long tradition of complex, actively intervening housing policy. On the other hand, there are the southern states (Portugal, Greece), whose housing policy from the view of the degree of state intervention

Housing Policy in the Slovak Republic http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.78611 23

A significant criterion, from which other "borders" develop, is the range of state intervention in the housing market, i.e., the complexity of housing policy. In this spirit we can define two

*The first* of them is labelled as additional and is characterised by an intense relying on the market mechanism, while the state effort is oriented mainly on personalised help for low income and other endangered group of inhabitants; the example of such a country following

*The second* is labelled as complex and is characterised by quite extensive state interventions in the housing market, which is oriented, more or less, to all layers of the society. Housing policy of this type prevails in the EU member states; mainly the approach of Germany, France,

In a more detailed way, the type of social policy in the broadest sense of the word, i.e., the type

Nowadays, the already classical typology of regimens of the welfare state allows us to derive four basic theoretical types of the European housing policy, the carriers of which, in the prac-

*The first type* of housing policy is derived from the social-democratic welfare state, which does not understand a human being just as a workforce and is based on the utilization of the citizen principle at providing social services. From the view of housing policy, it is a regimen, which supports the same access of all citizens to housing. The state actively intervenes in the housing market and supports mainly rental and cooperative housing. From the economic view, it is the ineffective model and in the long term not sustainable. Representatives of this approach

*The second type* of housing policy is derived from so-called corporatist or work and performance-related model of a social state, whose social policy derives mainly from the work activity of an individual in the labour market and emphasizes on the traditional social differentiation of the society. For housing policy of this type of a welfare state, there is a typical and significant reliance on the market mechanism; the state intervention into the housing market is also quite active and focused on all forms of housing in the housing market. Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands represent a housing policy of this type. *The mentioned model might be considered as the closest model of housing policy in the Slovak* 

*The third type* of housing policy is derived from the liberal state of public and social services, whose main characteristic feature is the emphasis on the activity of an individual and state

into housing is more likely less developed.

this type of housing policy is mainly Great Britain.

Netherlands and northern states represents it [1].

of welfare state differentiates the European housing policy [2].

basic types of housing policies:

tice, are the EU countries [3].

are mainly the northern states.

*Republic*.

In 1993 the independent Slovak Republic was established, and therefore other inevitable changes occurred in the field of housing and housing policy. One of the important decisions was the division of tasks in the frame of housing policy to three levels (central, regional and local). The state stayed a valuable player, who, however, stopped being involved in housing construction but took over the task of a creator of frame documents, via which the state tried to define basic principles and rules, in which the housing policy of Slovakia further moved. A significant impact of the development of housing in the years 1992–2006 was done by a process of massive and inappropriate privatisation of the housing stock, which caused a subsequent decrease in rental flats in Slovakia. Overall, between the years 1992 and 2006 according to OECD in Slovakia, approximately 340ths of council flats and 270ths of cooperative flats were privatised.

Decentralisation was another distinct impact, the part of which was also the transfer of competence in the field of housing, territorial planning and local development to the lower management level in the years 2000–2003. It resulted from the assumption that towns and villages will manage to reflect the needs on the local level better. A key player stayed a citizen, who should do his best to provide housing for himself and his family. Quickly this imagination was shown as illusory especially from the view of possibilities and the ability of citizens and especially of specific groups to provide housing exclusively with their own contribution.

According to first conceptions, the role of the state in the field of housing should have been limited just to the creation of conditions for origination of the real estate market. In regard to vigorous withdrawal of the state from financial participation in new housing construction at the beginning of the 1990s (the period of transformation process), the creation of conditions for the implementation of standard tools in the financial market was necessary to help households gain financial sources for the construction or purchase of a house/flat. It is mainly the implementation of the benefit for housing, building society accounts (1992) and mortgages (1999).
