| dc.description.abstract | Unlike many other European countries, Norwegian municipalities don’t play any important role in the national housing supply. Less than five per cent of Norwegian household live in a dwelling owned by the municipality. This part of the housing supply is primarily directed towards two main groups of people, namely people with severe economic, social and medical problems and elderly people. For the first target group, a frequent goal is that the municipal dwelling should serve as a temporary solution before the tenants are established in their own dwelling, either through the private rental market or in a owner dwelling. For the other target group the dwellings are often part of a care solution in the period between the time the need for care has increased so much that it enforces a move out from the ordinary dwelling and until the time of death or before the last phase of life in a nursery home.As a result of this policy, elderly people are strongly overrepresented in municipal owned dwellings compared to the rest of the population. Another outcome is many one person households with one elderly woman. Single persons are also overrepresented among young and middle aged tenants, but in this group with single men in majority. Families with children are underrepresented among municipal tenants. Immigrants are strongly overrepresented. The same is the case with immigrant families with children compared to families with children where the parents are born in Norway.Even if the elderly don’t have a tenancy agreement with a time limit, the circulation of tenants in these dwellings is high due to the high death rate among the elderly tenants. However, the circulation is rather high also in municipal dwellings occupied by younger people. Among municipal tenants younger than 40 late in 2001, least 50 percent had moved out of the dwelling before the end of 2004. Many of them moved away from the municipality. This was especially the case among younger tenants and immigrants. The highest rate of this type of moving was found among immigrants who in 2001 were living in North Norway. Some of the movers obtained to be home owners, for instance at least one third of the movers younger than 50. The change to become a home owner increases with increasing income and level of education. Tenants with children have a greater change to become owners than tenants without children. However, the correlation depends on the number of children, and disappears completely if the number of children exceeds three. Immigrants have a lower change to become home owners than tenants born in Norway.Tenants in municipal dwellings are seldom offered to by the dwelling. This is probably a result of the marginal size of this part of the Norwegian housing supply. The municipality may also be in great need of such dwellings. Between 2001 and 2004 only two per cent of tenants have become home owners without moving house. Compared to stable tenants, people moving out of municipal dwellings more often get a job and earned income, even more often if they move into an owner occupied dwelling. Probably this is due to the fact that tenants with most resources both are able to get a job and manage to finance a home purchase. The use of social security is more widespread among movers than among stable tenants. This may be caused by the rules of the housing allowance system in Norway. So long occupiers of some types of housing had been excluded from housing allowance, but these rules have been changed after our investigation. One half of municipal tenants receive housing allowances form the state. | en |
