North African countries still suffer today from an inexorable demographic demand for housing. The increase in population has been accompanied by high rates of urbanization as well as unemployment. Whereas the discourse in the 1960s and 1970s was about the acute shortages of housing, there is a shift today in that it is housing affordability rather than availability that has become a major problem.

In the 1970s and 1980s the public sector played an important role in housing provision, usually maintaining affordable housing through subsidies. This was particul…