A/HRC/10/7 page 11 25. However, during the same period, some developing countries, particularly in Latin America, experienced a strong demand for housing due to the urban impact of industrial development which attracted migrant flows from rural areas to cities. The lack of urban and housing policies, as well as the lack of land policies to enable this new urban population, mostly poor, to access urbanized land, meant that the majority of this new urban population was mostly housed in self-built informal settlements characterized by precarious housing and a severe lack of basic services and infrastructure. 26. An important shift was appearing, as one set of economic theories supported the transfer from State control to the private sector of economic activities and called for unrestricted free markets and free trade. Over the years this view became the predominant economic doctrine, shaping the policies of States, international financial institutions and development agencies. The effects of the hegemony of these new economic approaches on different States have also been influenced by their own legal, political and institutional context.30 27. In general, the role of governments concerning housing has been seen to shift in these countries from that of a provider to that of a facilitator.31 Thus, there has been a significant reduction in the construction of adequate housing for the poor - and most vulnerable groups along with decreasing national budgets and available public funds. States have instead privileged their role in the promotion and creation of an enabling environment to attract international capital and foreign investment for real estate operations. This new role is far from being a passive one; it is an active role which implies creating conditions, institutions and regulations aimed at supporting financial activities.32 28. Persuaded that they should diminish their intervention, governments started adapting their budgets and decreasing the funding for public housing and subsidies. It is argued that the current housing difficulties in France can partly be explained by an insufficient construction level throughout the last decade. While, home ownership has grown steadily in France since 1954, between 1989 and 1995 this increase slowed down due to the reduction of Government subsidies.33 Similarly, in Poland, a variety of central Government subsidies to housing have been cut over the past decades, as much as ten times over the period 1995-2004.34 30 N. Brenner and N. Theodore, “From the ‘new localism’ to the spaces of neoliberalism”, Antipode, vol. 34, No. 3, 2002. 31 J. Doherty and others, The Changing Role of the State: Welfare Delivery in the Neoliberal Era, European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA), 2005. 32 Ibid. 33 D. Czischke and A. Pittini, Housing Europe 2007: Review of Social, Co-operative and Public Housing in the 27 EU Member States, CECODHAS European Social Housing Observatory, 2007, p. 49. 34 Ibid., p. 72.