The aim of this paper is to give an overview of social housing in countries whose experiences can be useful in the development of a housing strategy of BiH, which aims at enhancing access to housing for vulnerable groups. After several years of experience with the introduction and analysis of the practice of rental programs in the region we are able to discuss some of the key dilemmas and formulate some conclusions that would be relevant for BiH. Reviewing the existing models from all over Europe critically will inform decision-making, but experts and politicians in Bosnia Herzegovina are expected to work out the solutions which are applicable in their particular context. In Bosnia-Herzegovina (as in other countries where radical privatization took place) there is practically no public rental sector in existence. Thus the question is what institutions will represent the new public rental sector and what tools can be considered relevant in the BiH context, with what constraints or advantages for a future housing policy aiming at increasing the participation of socially vulnerable groups in housing policy measures. Ex-Yugoslavia was part of the block of centrally planned economies, which had a housing system very similar in its logic to that of the other socialist countries, especially to Hungary. The important characteristics of this housing system were the one-party political control over the housing sector, the subordinate role of market mechanisms, the lack of market competition among housing agencies (bureaucratic coordination), and a broad control over the allocation of housing services (huge, non-transparent subsidies). However, under this model several “sub-models” (versions) emerged as responses of the individual countries to challenges in the process of the development of the socialist economy. In Yugoslavia, the model of “socialist self-government” led to a special tenure form of social-ownership, which was basically a version of owner-occupation. (UN-Habitat,2005) Similar forms of housing were found in other socialist countries under different names (cooperative, etc.) The differences in tenure structure (state-owned rental, cooperative housing and owner occupation) and in different financial schemes (cooperative, state bank financed owner-occupied, etc.) were not relevant from the point of view of the operation of the housing sector.a