Editing Eastern Bloc (section)

===Shortages===
The initial year that shortages were effectively measured and shortages in 1986 were as follows:<ref name="sillince11">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|pp=11–12}}</ref>
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: left"
|+Housing shortages in the Eastern Bloc and Yugoslavia
|-
!Country
!Initial year
!Initial year shortage
!% of total stock
!1986 shortage
!1986% of total stock
|-
|align=left|[[People's Republic of Albania|Albania]] || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a
|-
|align=left|[[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]] || 1965 || 472,000 || 23.0% || 880,400 || 27.4%
|-
|align=left|[[People's Republic of Hungary|Hungary]] || 1973 || 6,000 || 0.2% || 257,000 || 6.6%
|-
|align=left|[[East Germany]] || 1971 || 340,000 || 5.6% || 1,181,700 || 17.1%
|-
|align=left|[[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]] || 1974 || 1,357,000 || 15.9% || 2,574,800 || 23.9%
|-
|align=left|[[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]] || 1966 || 575,000 || 11.0% || 1,157,900 || 14.0%
|-
|align=left|[[Soviet Union]] || 1970 || 13,690,000 || 23.1% || 26,662,400 || 30.2%
|-
|align=left|[[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] || 1970 || 438,000 || 9.9% || 877,600 || 15.3%
|-
|align=left|[[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] || n/a || n/a || n/a || 1,634,700 || 23.9%
|}
These are official housing figures and may be low. For example, in the Soviet Union the figure of 26,662,400 in 1986 almost certainly underestimates shortages for the reason that it does not count shortages from large Soviet rural-urban migration; another calculation estimates shortages to be 59,917,900.<ref name="sillince17">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=17}}</ref> By the late 1980s, [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]] had an average 20-year wait time for housing while Warsaw had between a 26- and 50-year wait time.<ref name="sillince27">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=27}}</ref><ref name="turnock25"/> In the Soviet Union, widespread illegal subletting occurred at exorbitant rates.<ref name="sillince33">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=33}}</ref> Toward the end of the Eastern Bloc allegations of misallocations and illegal distribution of housing were raised in Soviet [[CPSU]] Central Committee meetings.<ref name="sillince33"/>

In [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]], housing problems were caused by slow rates of construction, poor home quality (which was even more pronounced in villages) and a large black market.<ref name="sillince2"/> In [[People's Republic of Romania|Romania]], social engineering policy and concern about the use of agricultural land forced high densities and high-rise housing designs.<ref name="sillince3">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=3}}</ref> In [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]], a prior emphasis on monolithic high-rise housing lessened somewhat in the 1970s and 1980s.<ref name="sillince3"/> In the Soviet Union, housing was perhaps the primary social problem.<ref name="sillince3"/> While Soviet housing construction rates were high, quality was poor and demolition rates were high, in part because of an inefficient building industry and lack of both quality and quantity of construction materials.<ref name="sillince3"/>

[[East Germany|East German]] housing suffered from a lack of quality and a lack of skilled labor, with a shortage of materials, plot and permits.<ref name="sillince4">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Sillince|1990|p=4}}</ref> In staunchly Stalinist [[People's Republic of Albania|Albania]], housing blocks (''panelka'') were spartan, with six-story walk-ups being the most frequent design.<ref name="sillince4"/> Housing was allocated by workplace trade unions and built by voluntary labor organised into brigades within the workplace.<ref name="sillince4"/> [[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] suffered from fast urbanisation, uncoordinated development and poor organisation resulting from a lack of hierarchical structure and clear accountability, low building productivity, the monopoly position of building enterprises and irrational credit policies.<ref name="sillince4"/>