A/68/289 in the housing sector. Such institutions range from charities and housing associations to educational bodies. However, the social housing sector is substantive only in a handful of countries, mainly in Western Europe. As a result of cuts in funding to public housing and the ongoing global economic and financial crisis, waiting lists for social housing are increasing and the provision of affordable housing is not sufficient to keep up with the demand. In England, housing waiting lists augmented by 76 per cent between 2000 and 2011; 37 in France 1.2 million applicants are registered on waiting lists for social housing, and in Italy there are 630,000. 38 2. Private rental 25. Despite the decline in support for rental housing, the absolute number of tenants worldwide is rising. Across the world, approximately 1.2 billion people (around one third of the urban population and one sixth of all people in the world) 39 live in rented accommodation, the great majority in towns and cities. In many European countries the private rental sector, including informal, is playing a growing role for the poor, owing to inadequate access to social housing and greater constraints in accessing ownership. 40 In developing countries, the largest proportion of tenants is in urban Africa; in Asia, tenants comprise approximately one third of the urban population. 41 26. Rental arrangements provide a range of options to low-income households in terms of location, improved mobility (particularly related to employment opportunities) and flexibility in terms of dwelling type (smaller or shared units that are not available in other tenure forms). 42 Rental tenure enables low-income households to avoid house price risks, indebtedness and exposure to falling capital values and carries a lower transaction cost than homeownership. 43 Rental housing also provides a regular additional source of income for low-income small landlords, which can serve as a safety net against precarious employment or as a form of pension after retirement and old age. This is particularly important in the case of low-income settlements. However, construction of extensions for renting purposes is often discouraged by planning regulations and stringent building standards. 44 __________________ 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 10/24 Department of Communities and Local Government Households on local authorities’ housing waiting lists. Available from http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housingresearch/ housingstatistics/housingstatisticsby/rentslettings/livetables/ (table 600). Pittini, “Housing affordability in the EU” (see footnote 7 above), p. 8. World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision. Towards a Sustainable Private Rented Sector: the Lessons from Other Countries, Kath Scanlon and Ben Kochan, eds. (London, London School of Economics, 2011), p. 8; see also Peter A. Kemp, “Low-income tenants in the private rental housing market”, Housing Studies, vol. 26 (2011), pp. 1019 and 1020-1021. For example, in 2007 one in eight households in England were renting their home from a private landlord, but almost a quarter of those living in poverty were doing so. Sunil Kumar, “The research-policy dialectic: a critical reflection on the virility of landlordtenant research and the impotence of rental housing policy formulation in the urban Global South”, City, vol. 15, No. 6 (2011), pp. 662, 663-664. Towards a Sustainable Private Rented Sector (see footnote 40 above), p. 12. Ibid., p. 139. Sunil Kumar, “Room for manoeuvre: tenure and the urban poor in India”, paper presented at the Second Urban Research Symposium, 15-17 December 2003 (World Bank, Washington, D.C.); see also UN-Habitat, Shelter Provision and Employment Generation (Geneva, 1995). 13-42184