Este hilo es súper interesante
I can’t speak for the rest of Europe, but I can talk about the USSR. In short, they didn’t, but it’s not just the war fault, USSR had issues with housing even before the war, the whole of its history in fact, but they tried.
Actually somewhat of a solution came with Khruschev, but the first attempts were during Stalin’s period. As an example, I’ll use Ukraine, cause it suffered greatly during the war and I am familiar with its development.
Generally, as a result of the war Ukraine lost around 40 mln sqm(50% of its pre-war) housing, which resulted in 10 mln homeless people. The rebuilding process started during the war and would continue for decades. While that was happening people lived in damaged houses, overpopulated campuses, barracks, basements and dugouts(small dwelling half submerged in the ground).
In 1944 a special database was created and local authorities as well as the Soviet government tried to provide housing. One of their first decisions was that a maximum norm for sqm per person was implemented and if your dwelling had more than the allotted amount government would house additional people with you. That was a common practice in USSR, communal housing was a solution that wen’t through the 20s and 30s, and this was a more extreme version of that.
While this bandaid was implemented a special committee started work on projects to begin mass housing development. By 1945 system was created with scores of special building organisations that consisted of architects, professional builders and engineers across the USSR. The first development plans were approved in 1945 and according to them Kyiv, Kharkiv, Stalino(Donetsk), Dnipropetrovsk(Dnipro) and Voroshilovgrad(Lugansk) will be first in line to start rebuilding. By spring 1945 a national committee of civil housing and a national committee of public affairs were created, they were to oversee these programs in future.
Apart from the government there also was a public initiative, some people created street and block committees to restore damaged housing. Additional funds were allotted to create educational facilities that would teach citizens the basics of building and restoration as well as new incentives to train more engineers and professional builders. Colgosp system was actively used in rural areas, they both provided tools and had their own building brigades.
All of this resulted in 21 mln sqm of housing being created by 1950, but the living situation was still dreadful, the bandaid solutions stayed for quite a while longer. Also, it’s worth mentioning that because money was drained from other industries they didn’t recover post-war and stayed stumped for decades, namely products of everyday use, household items, clothing and so on. (In the soviet system they just went by “Product group B”)
The next major attempt, the one that actually made a dent in the housing issue, came with the death of Stalin. Mikita Khrushchov started the largest housing program of the Soviet Union - Khrushchevkas.
First, to explain what Khrushchevka is. By the 1950s soviet civil engineers concluded that to provide the population with enough housing they had to develop a new type of building, it had to be low-cost, easy to construct, could be built on mass and would be very minimal. The concept that was approved was Khrushchevka, or rather that is what they will call it later. So khrushchevka is a 3 to 5 story apartment complex made out of concrete-steel panels, its apartments have 2 bedrooms(or a living room and a bedroom, 2 rooms in total), around 35 sqm, with no lift and no garbage chute.
To provide construction with enough material additional steel-concrete factories were built all over USSR, in Kiyv alone 5 of them appeared. Generally concrete production in USSR skyrocketed during this period. From 1950 to 1958 the amount of money given to civil housing increased by 350%.
As a result of those measures in 1956-63 as much housing was built as in 40 years before and Ukraine in 1958 doubled its 1950 stats on built houses per capita. All in all, just in 1958-60 Ukraine, the development peak, 43.2 mln sqm of housing was built and 4.2 mln people got a home. Even by 2000s khrushchevkas accounted for around 20%(71.2 mln sqm) of apartment complexes in Ukraine.
All of that sounds great, but unfortunately, it didn’t solve the issue, housing will stay as one of the key problems of the USSR, in large part just due to people moving to cities, population growth, earlier and later policies, the government simply could not outrun the scarcity.
Another trouble with khrushchevkas, that will become evident later, they weren’t particularly good quality, as often is with mass development, now, 65 years later they desperately need restoration, insulation upgrades, concrete panels aren’t great for that and some are being demolished due to being too dangerous, in fact, one of the first blocks, which was used as the “poster boy” for the project, they even made ridiculous a musical about it, Cheremushki in Moscow, is no more.
So that’s USSR housing after the war, naturally, there is a lot more to it but that is the gist.
Sources:
Ковпак Л.В. Соціально-побутові умови життя населення України в другій половині ХХ ст. p. 27-48 (1945–2000 рр.). — К., 2003.
Реформи в УРСР у соціальній сфері (1950–1960-ті рр.): житлове забезпечення / О. Янковська, Д. Бачинський // Україна XX ст.: культура, ідеологія, політика: Зб. ст. — К., 2013
