本文由三个部分组成。第一部分论述理论。我们评估了政府参与城市住房建设的利弊，以及租房和买房的利弊。在第二部分中，我们总结了美国、欧洲和亚洲实施的不同住房政策。我们得出了一些结论。特别是，我们表明，在鼓励住房所有权和社会住房之间存在权衡，因为支持前者的国家忽视了后者(如日本、西班牙等)。在第三部分，我们运用理论和国际政策部分来解决中国的住房政策问题。中国城市的一个主要问题是，居住在“城中村”的“非法”移民(即中国农村居民)加剧了贫困。我们建议采取两个步骤来消除中国城市的贫困。第一个是要求中国政府承认这些“非法”移民，帮助他们成为“合法”移民。 The second step is to encourage social housing that directly or indirectly subsidizes housing for the poor. In that case, to fight against poverty, one can either implement place-targeted policies (like the enterprise zone programs in the US and Europe and/or housing projects in the US, UK, or France) or people-targeted policies (like the MTO programs in the US). We also discuss other issues related to poverty. In particular, we suggest that the government could also try to keep migrants in rural areas by attracting firms there and/or introduce a microfinance system that helps them become entrepreneurs.