Editing Eastern Bloc (section)

===Development policies===
[[File:Wohnbebauung-Ernst-Thaelmann-Park-09-2018c.jpg|left|thumb|[[East Germany|East German]] [[Plattenbau]] apartment blocks]]
In social terms, the 18 years (1964–1982) of Brezhnev's leadership saw real incomes grow more than 1.5 times. More than 1.6 billion square metres of living space were commissioned and provided to over 160&nbsp;million people. At the same time, the average rent for families did not exceed 3% of the family income. There was unprecedented affordability of housing, health care and education.<ref name="ria.ru"/>

In a survey by the Sociological Research Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1986, 75% of those surveyed said that they were better off than the previous ten years. Over 95% of Soviet adults considered themselves "fairly well off". 55% of those surveyed felt that medical services improved, 46% believed public transportation had improved and 48% said that the standard of services provided public service establishments had risen.<ref>Update USSR, Vol. 53. April 1986. N.W.R. Publications. p. 11</ref>

During the years 1957–1965, housing policy underwent several institutional changes with industrialisation and urbanisation had not been matched by an increase in housing after World War II.<ref name="sillince36">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|pp=36–37}}</ref> Housing shortages in the Soviet Union were worse than in the rest of the Eastern Bloc due to a larger migration to the towns and more wartime devastation and were worsened by Stalin's pre-war refusals to invest properly in housing.<ref name="sillince36"/> Because such investment was generally not enough to sustain the existing population, apartments had to be subdivided into increasingly smaller units, resulting in several families sharing an apartment previously meant for one family.<ref name="sillince36"/>

The prewar norm became one Soviet family per room, with the toilets and kitchen shared.<ref name="sillince36"/> The amount of living space in urban areas fell from 5.7 square metres per person in 1926 to 4.5 square metres in 1940.<ref name="sillince36"/> In the rest of the Eastern Bloc during this time period, the average number of people per room was 1.8 in [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]] (1956), 2.0 in [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] (1961), 1.5 in [[People's Republic of Hungary|Hungary]] (1963), 1.7 in [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]] (1960), 1.4 in [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]] (1966), 2.4 in [[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] (1961) and 0.9 in 1961 in [[East Germany]].<ref name="sillince36"/>

After Stalin's death in 1953, forms of an economic "New Course" brought a revival of private house construction.<ref name="sillince36"/> Private construction peaked in 1957–1960 in many Eastern Bloc countries and then declined simultaneously along with a steep increase in state and co-operative housing.<ref name="sillince36"/> By 1960, the rate of housebuilding per head had picked up in all countries in the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="sillince36"/> Between 1950 and 1975, worsening shortages were generally caused by a fall in the proportion of all investment made housing.<ref name="sillince48">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=748}}</ref> However, during that period the total number of dwellings increased.<ref name="sillince49">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=49}}</ref>

During the last fifteen years of this period (1960–1975), an emphasis was made for a supply side solution, which assumed that industrialised building methods and high rise housing would be cheaper and quicker than traditional brick-built, low-rise housing.<ref name="sillince49"/> Such methods required manufacturing organisations to produce the [[prefabricated]] components and organisations to assemble them on site, both of which planners assumed would employ large numbers of unskilled workers-with powerful political contacts.<ref name="sillince49"/> The lack of participation of eventual customers, the residents, constituted one factor in escalating construction costs and poor quality work.<ref name="sillince50">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=50}}</ref> This led to higher demolition rates and higher costs to repair poorly constructed dwellings.<ref name="sillince50"/> In addition, because of poor quality work, a black market arose for building services and materials that could not be procured from state monopolies.<ref name="sillince50"/>

In most countries, completions (new dwellings constructed) rose to a high point between 1975 and 1980 and then fell as a result presumably of worsening international economic conditions.<ref name="sillince7">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=7}}</ref> This occurred in Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania (with an earlier peak in 1960 also), Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia while the Soviet Union peaked in 1960 and 1970.<ref name="sillince7"/> While between 1975 and 1986, the proportion of investment devoted to housing actually rose in most of the Eastern Bloc, general economic conditions resulted in total investment amounts falling or becoming stagnant.<ref name="sillince48"/>

The employment of socialist ideology in housing policy declined in the 1980s, which accompanied a shift in authorities looking at the need of residents to an examination of potential residents' ability to pay.<ref name="sillince48"/> Yugoslavia was unique in that it continuously mixed private and state sources of housing finance, stressed self-managed building co-operatives along with central government controls.<ref name="sillince48"/>