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This paper will set out the concept of a 'gap' between the social rented and market rented housing sector. This will be examined with respect to one aspect of competition between the two sectors in England, France, the Netherlands and Germany: substitutability. The analysis will involve an examination of the extent to which tenants can choose between the two sectors. The price-quality bundles of housing services as expressed by the characteristics of the accommodation, the property rights of the tenants, the allocation system and the housing allowances in the different countries will be compared. Competition measured in this way seems to be rather larger than smaller in the Netherlands and Germany and rather small in England. France's intermediate sector partly closes the gap between both rental tenures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept underclass has become widely used to describe and analyse new conditions of poverty and marginality in the United States and increasingly in Europe as well. Yet, the concept remains ambiguous and subject to debate. This article contributes to the debate. Locating the underclass in the theory of citizenship and social class, the author examines the connections between social citizenship rights and the institutional structure of two corporatist/continental European welfare states, the Netherlands and Germany. She then examines the changing institutional context of several dimensions of social citizenship rights, in particular, unemployment benefits, social assistance and housing, to assess the degree to which these institutions may exclude economically weak populations. Although the Netherlands and Germany are representative of the continental European welfare state, the institutional structures and networks that provide the benefits of social citizenship to economically weak populations differ at the local level. These differences generate different fault lines that may become the bases for more significant exclusionary boundaries in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]