Upload
augustine-patrick
View
214
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Social movements behind the struggle for housing
Building Societies
• 1775 Birmingham
• Mutual, self-help to let the better off working class own a house
• Longbridge Building Society 1793: weavers, yeomen, stonemasons, carpenter, cotton spinner
• “Terminating” or “Permanent” Societies
• Management professionalised
19th century
• New Lanarkshire
• Chartist cottages
• Peabody
• Guinness
Peabody Trust 1862: philanthropy
Artisan’s and Labourers’ Dwellings Act 1868
• Control on slum landlords
Guinness Trust Housing 1890
Royal Commission on housing of the working class1885
• “Common practice in London for each family to have only a single room, for the rent of which nearly 1/3 of them paid between 25% and 50% of their wage.”
• Bourneville 1893
• Port Sunlight 1899
Garden city movement
Freedom, cooperation and country: Ebenezer Howard: 1850-1928
Glasgow rent strike• Rent strikes against private landlords
• Blocking evictions
• Led by Glasgow Labour Housing Association
• Street Committees mostly led by women
• Shipyard workers have wages seized to pay rent
• Widespread strike in the yards then general strike: stops munitions manufacture: government caves and...
1915 Act
• Introduces tight rent controls freezing rents at pre-1914 levels
• Before this 90% of housing by private landlords
Homes fit for heroes
• Addison Act: 1919: funds for Council housing
• -1939: 1 million homes, 10% of stock
Why council housing?
• Either– The free market in private rentals had failed: 1914
accounted for 90% of housing– Income too low to pay for decent housing– State has to intervene
• Or– Rent controls had made the private sector
unprofitable and so had stifled investment – Rent controls continued
The 20s and 30s
• Expansion of owner-occupation funded by Building Societies
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18978075
Prefabs
Squatting
• Post WWII Army camps
• Unallocated Council housing
• Houses due for demolition for flat building
1964 17 stories
Tower blocks
Shelter
• Cathy Come Home
• 1966 St Martin in the Fields
Housing Finance Act 1972
• Raise both private and Council rents
• Rent tribunals to set market rents
• Rent rebates for low income Council tenants means tested
• If Councillors refused to implement the Act they would be fined individually and a Government-appointed commissioned would implement the Act
Clay Cross• Derbyshire small town: 11 councillors, all
Labour
• Refused to implement or cooperate with Commissioner
• No higher rents collected
• Council abolished in reorganisation
Thatcher sell off
• 1980 Housing Act: right for council tenants to buy
• A property-owning democracy
• Low prices for longer serving tenants: 60% discount for 30-year tenants in houses; 70% for 15-year tenants in flats
• 1.2 million council dwellings sold 1980-89
• Collapse of Council new build
Housing Associations
• Lot of Council flats left in public ownership handed over to housing associations
• Housing Corporation (only England)– Regulator and– Subsidies: £2 billion pa– About 50,000 a year at its peak– Abolished 2008 in the bonfire of the quangos– Homes and Communities Agency and Tenant
Services Authority
1986 Building Societies Act
• Lets BSs become banks:– De mutualise and float shares
• Northern Rock– 1965 Merger of two North East BSs– Invested in US sub primes– Run on NR