Some people believe that governments should provide free or low-cost housing for people who cannot afford it, while others think housing should be left to the private market. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

Those who favour public provision point first to the simple matter of fairness. A nurse or a bus driver keeps a city running, yet

such

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workers can no longer afford to live where they work. In Casablanca,

for instance

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, thousands of families still occupy informal settlements on the outskirts because no landlord will rent to them at a price they can pay. Closely linked to

this

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is the cost of doing nothing, since homelessness and overcrowding lead to illness and crime, and,

consequently

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, the state pays far more in hospitals and police than it would have spent on decent flats.

Nevertheless

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, critics raise objections that deserve attention. The most serious is that government estates are often badly built, so that within a decade they become the very slums they were meant to replace.

Moreover

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, when the government supplies homes cheaply, commercial developers may stop building for the lower end of the market, and the shortage grows worse. The tower blocks constructed on the edge of Rabat in the 1980s,

for example

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, are now among the most troubled neighbourhoods in the capital. In my view,

however

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, these are failures of design and management rather than of the idea itself, and a programme that builds smaller estates with shops and transport can avoid them.