Socio-economic and physical change has visibly affected post-socialist cities, yet the state of decay of their inherited large housing estates has only deepened throughout the 1990s, despite of the change in tenure through
IntroductionUnder the macro-economic constraints of post-communist restructuring since 1989, Eastern European governments have launched neo-liberal policies of large scale housing privatisation and overall state retreat from housing provision. Consequently, owner-occupation has reached over 93 percent of the housing stock in most Eastern European countries, and in Romanian large housing estates it has surpassed 99 percent (NIS, 2005). The state of decay of these estates has deepened throughout the 1990s. In order to take on their new responsibilities, flat-owners were challenged from two major directions. First, a comprehensive regulatory framework able to sustain a market-driven housing system, including condominium management, was until recently non-existent. documented (Hardin & Baden, 1977;Olson, 1971;Ostrom, 1990), this was likely to spur dilemmas of collective action and thus, asset degradation. Second, the macro-economic reforms of transition, global economic change and laissez-faire state policies throughout the 1990s have engendered an affordability crisis affecting both access to housing and the running costs of utilities and repairs.
Whose housing problems?Besides the politico-economic rationale of early post-communist reforms, it was nonetheless hoped that decentralization and housing privatisation would stimulate local actors to improve housing quality and availability. In particular, households would begin to address the deferred maintenance problems of their newly privatized dwellings whereas local governments would engage in the delivery of housing services and assist social housing needs. This challenge of shaping new roles and attitudes among housing actors requires a discussion of the concept of ownership and its bundle of collective rights, which are prone to social dilemmas.
The social contract of ownershipBroadly speaking, the paradigmatic change experienced by Eastern Europe has been twice engineered through the mechanism of property rights. Prior communist policies of nationalisation were reversed by post-communist policies of privatisation and restitution,