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Abstract
Shared ownership schemes are being introduced in Australia at a time when there has been a considerable shift in community attitudes towards the role of the public sector. This shift has brought both a push for privatisation and a push for improved targeting of public expenditure.
The emergence of support for shared ownership can be interpreted, in turn, as a desire to prop up home ownership; a means of reducing public expenditure on housing and/or an attempt to improve the targeting of support provided by public housing. Shared ownership has been heralded as the new way of providing social housing by its protagonists and decried as a means of diverting scarce resources from more pressing needs by its critics. Which of these is paramount depends on the way in which shared ownership schemes are implemented.
This paper outlines a basic framework within which an unsubsidised shared ownership scheme can work and indicates how a subsidised approach can be introduced without threatening funds provided for public housing.