Photo: Anders Wiklund/TTIn the latest instalment of our Sweden in Focus series, The Local delves into the complicated story of Sweden's housing crisis. According to the country’s National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (Boverket), 255 of Sweden’s 290 municipalities now report a housing shortage. "Some regard the main cause as the retrenchment of the state form the housing question, others regard the state interventions as the cause," Malmö University’s Martin Grander, whose research specializes in housing and housing inequality, told The Local. But lowering housing standards in the pursuit of short-term alleviation carries a wider risk, Malmö University’s Grander warned:"Traditionally we have built housing with long life spans and good quality and architecture. Boverket’s housing analyst Söderberg thinks that ultimately, Sweden's issue with housing can be tied to four key long-standing problems in the system, and by extension, that it has four solutions.

Source: The Local August 28, 2017 06:56 UTC