At the same time land-use and planning have important implications for housing policy. On the one hand they have direct effects on spatial segregation, on the other, they can limit the responsiveness of housing supply to other housing programmes by increasing the amount of time and the number of bureaucratic steps needed to obtain building permits (OECD, 2011). Furthermore, when land-use and planning restrictions limit housing supply, land and housing prices will capture the value of housing subsidies, with perverse effects on wealth distribution. Moreover, multiple levels of government are responsible for executing, regulating and sometimes delivering these policies. This high degree of complexity might lead to contrasting objectives and goals, with loss of efficiency and potentially wider negative effects on the economy. This paper identifies the main challenges faced by households in accessing good-quality affordable housing and analyses the housing policies put in place by OECD countries to understand the degree to which they share social policy objectives and pursue them through the implemented policy mix.