The Origins of Housing Policy
The debate leading towards a government policy on housing began in the 19th century.
'The worlds leading nation was by the 1840s also the location of some of the world’s worst slums …' but the French revolution encouraged reformist debate 'A deep distrust and fear of the brutalised masses was a theme running through the whole Victorian period.' [1]
1930: Entrance to cellar dwellings
Liverpool in 1840: 40,000 people lived in cellars.
The Free Market - laissez-faire
Nevertheless, Baldwin’s Conservative government espoused a policy of laissez-faire in 1866, which asserted that, free from restraints, the market would provide. Property owners who comprised the personnel of newly formed local government militated against the expense of municipal building.
James Hole pointed out that
'To ask them to close the cellar dwellings is to ask them to forfeit a portion of their income. Every pound they vote for drainage or other sanitary improvement, is something taken out of their own pockets.' [2]
The First Act
The Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919 introduced subsidies and for the first time Local Authorities were given a clear responsibility for housing provision. By 1939, Local Authorities had built over 1 million dwellings, which together with private housing established a crude numerical balance between the number of households and dwellings.
Back-to-back houses
Declared unfit for habitation in 1909, but built in Leeds till 1930s
Post-War Building
During the war years, the stock suffered badly from bombing and neglect. Nearly half a million houses were destroyed and about 3 million were damaged. With a population increased by 1 million, the great post war rebuilding programmes began.
For 25 years, both Labour and Conservative governments pursued policies of housing provision with targets in the public rented sector of up to 300,000 houses per year and achieved the numerical parity of households and dwellings by 1969.
Homes for Heroes
The Labour Party led the development in post war policies of high quality housing provision for everyone. Conservatives supported the popular concept of “Homes for Heroes”, especially the government of Macmillan whose phrase “You’ve never had it do good” had much to do with improvements in the housing of the people.
After 20 years, the financial power of investment meant that many Local Authorities began to approach the level of cost-balanced rents. The private rented sector went into rapid decline because it couldn’t compete with the investment-based costs of home ownership or Local Authority housing.
The Need for Reform
But difficulties began to develop:
- The commercially pressured scarcity of land in cities led to some bad design of “system built” high rise flats.
- The social isolation of large estates created in the rush to achieve building targets.
- A growing national problem for the mobility of labour, due to local councils protecting access to their waiting lists and the decline of the private rented sector.
In the 1960s, when owner occupation and the residualisation of the rented sector began to grow, the Labour Party failed to recognise the need for radical reforms to the original concepts of council housing. Labour Party debate, at the national level, was preoccupied with the special problems of City housing.
The Return to Baldwin
Radical reform was conceded to the Conservatives and it began in 1972, with the introduction of the Fair Rent Act, even more decisively by the Right-to-Buy Act in 1980 and by deregulation of the housing market in 1988.
The policies of housing provision were substituted by policies of tenure. The Conservative Party declared its intention to revive the private rented sector, in their confidence that the market, freed from restraints, would provide. They had decided to revert to the policies of Baldwin and the 19th century.
But the belief was bolstered by some more political considerations. Mrs. Thatcher in a 1979 Commons debate made the unashamed claim, that the Right-to-Buy policy alone was sufficient to persuade thousands of people to vote Conservative for the first time. Certainly the receipts from council house sales have dwarfed the income from all other privatisation deals. But twice that amount was given away in discounts, while distorting the balance of stock between the rented and ownership markets.