From Our Archive: Freedom and Local Authority Housing

About one in three of every home in Britain is owned by a local authority. The growth of the council house sector has been a dominating theme of domestic politics both national and local. In the past 10 years the political debate has been accompanied by evidence and argument from a variety of studies, many by sociologists, which have examined different aspects of the council housing story. The starting point of most studies is the recognition that in Britain it is no longer the case that housing can be studied in relation to market forces only, since the scale of Government intervention, not only in the creation of a public sector but also in the form and scope of non-public sectors, is of primary significance. Popularly there are two stereotypes of the council tenant: on the one hand, the subsidised occupier of a grand suburban semi, well situated in relation to shops, roads and other amenities—a privileged beneficiary of socialist redistributive policies; and, on the other, the embattled and careworn occupier of a drab and damp maisonette on a poorly planned peripheral estate, where vandals, official neglect and skimped repairs provide heartfelt desires but scant opportunity for escape—the victim of a repressive system of state welfare. In this short article I want to review some of the studies made in the last decade in order to examine some of the issues and problems in assessing the current contribution of the local authority managed sector to those cherished values of our liberal democracy, equality and individual liberty.

It may be useful to start with Rex and Moore's study of an inner-city Birmingham neighbourhood entitled Race Community and Conflict. In the 10 years since it was published it has had a considerable influence, not for the examination of life in a multiracial zone which fills most of the book, but for its theoretical orientation which Rex himself and others have taken up, expanded and criticised in a number of papers and articles. The Rex thesis states that a class struggle over the use of houses is the central process of the city as a social unit and that there are as many housing classes as there are differences in access to housing. Access is determined not simply by the relationship to the means of production: bureaucratic rules and procedures determine access to finance for ownership and to the council house sector. Rex posited a unitary value system for what constitutes desirable housing, and stresses how “those who have council houses or will get them soon will seek to defend the system of allocation which secures their privileges against all categories of potential competitors”.

It is not my intention to rehearse here the arguments and counter arguments of Rex's formulation—the controversy is excellently summarised in the newly published second edition of Pahl's Whose City?’ – but to note that the emphasis laid on access and allocation has been followed in subsequent studies. Some have explored the network of rules, particularly as they relate to prospective council tenants among immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Other authors have studied the process of urban renewal and considered the situation of those whose access to council housing was by virtue of comprehensive slum clearance policies. Another series of studies, influenced by the Shelter campaign, has considered the effect of restrictive criteria of eligibility for council houses (at a time of increasing scarcity) on homelessness. Many of these themes were taken up by the Central Housing Advisory Committee in their ninth report Council Housing: Purposes, Procedures and Priorities which argues for Local Authority Housing Management to be concerned with comprehensive housing needs and services, not just with local authority managed houses.

Whilst most of these studies and reports concur with Rex over the importance of allocative rules and the significance of council housing for a substantial sector of the population, few show signs of those with council houses defending “the system of allocation... against all categories of potential competitors”. Rather, the studies suggest the growing influence of professionals in local government in the design and management of the council housing sector and reveal a growing conflict over the role and purpose of council housing. The Rex thesis, on the other hand, suggests that council housing represents an achievement by the organised working class which is sustained by the continuing political will of the beneficiaries. However, there are few places where council tenants control the local authority: so rather than seeing those in a common housing situation having some power by virtue of that housing position, it becomes necessary to explore what sort of power is indicated by different housing positions. Surely Pahl is correct in reformulating Rex's housing classes away from present housing position to the means of access which depends on ownership of capital. In this formulation the lowest housing class is comprised of those who must rent. The dispute and conflict in the studies of council house allocation relates to the compensatory nature of council housing for this group and whether allocation policies do in fact favour them.

Housing need v. Housing lists

Certainly the period 1970 to 1975 has been one in which Government policies have encouraged local authorities to use its council house stock progressively for those in “need”. The 1972 Housing Finance Act was the clearest attempt by government to impose on the council house sector “market” rents which would presumably encourage those who could buy their own homes to do so. The arguments from Shelter and from diverse studies that “housing need not length of residence, should determine eligibility for council housing were also amenable to this new drive to make the sector the haven of the needy, not of the privileged. So long as there was buoyancy in the market of houses for sale and availability of mortgage funds for a wide cross-section of the public then such policies had a certain coherence. In this period, however, there was as well a very considerable slump in council house building which appeared to have been halted by measures adopted by the Labour Government in 1974, until the severe cuts in public expenditure limited scope for council house building expansion. Throughout this time, continuing slum clearance has provided many local authorities with sufficient priority cases for housing allocation. So, in a period of increased pressure on the sector for high rents, reduction in building programmes, soaring prices and scarcity in the private sector, waiting for a council home as the only avenue to decent housing has been the experience of many thousands of families lacking the means of house purchase. How to manage the frustrations of those waiting on registers has once again become a major problem for Housing Managers.

Some clues as to the effects of the complex set of policies at work can be indicated from figures for Birmingham between 1970 and 1974. Birmingham has a very large council sector, and has had a very large slum clearance programme, but by 1970 appeared to enjoy a situation in which houses produced were in excess of houses demolished and the housing register was steadily in decline. However, between 1971 and 1973, the number of new dwellings becoming available for letting was only slightly more than those available in 1970 alone. There was also a decline in the number of persons vacating council homes and, more significantly, the number of those withdrawing from the council register (through achieving owner occupation mainly) slumped by 50 per cent. So, in this period, not only was it becoming more difficult and more expensive to become a council tenant, it was even more difficult to move from being a council tenant or to find alternatives to a council tenancy. In Birmingham the housing register rose from 22,000 to over 30,000 in three years.

A great many policy measures were being used or sought to provide alternatives or to ease mobility from the council sector. In cities like Birmingham vendors of old properties found a ready market and with a dilatory corporation mortgage service (now severed by government cuts) the fringe banks and other sources of finance had something of a field day among those excluded from or with no early prospect of a council letting. What seemed unambiguously the case was that the council house sector was a haven, a source of privilege.

Was this indeed so? Some recent studies have explored the nature of the privilege involved in being a council tenant. If the earlier studies assumed (either as a matter of political achievement or something to deplore) the position of the council tenant to be subsidised, secure and comparable both in cost and amenity standards to that of the owner-occupier, these later studies have brought our second stereotype clearly into view.

Shelter’s recent report Fit For heroes provides some grim reminders that council tenants have few enforceable rights but plenty of obligations. They do not enjoy any statutory protection from eviction and there have been notable recent cases of council tenants having to resort to the Public Health Acts to get local councils to carry out essential repairs and maintenance. It is a reminder, too, that not all council estates are tree-lined, with semis, gardens and garages but that many are older, with blocks of units of a style which would not get planning consent by modern standards. In Birmingham (not one of the cities featured in the Shelter report) 40 per cent of the council's housing stock is flats, and many of these are drab, crowded four-storey blocks built on featureless estates in the 1950s before Parker Morris standards were introduced. It is these sorts of estates which generate complaints that they are used as dumping grounds by housing managers for “bad” tenants, and from which there are few hopes of escape.

Public subsidies or Mortgages

lf the Shelter tendency for polemic and hyperbole may be thought to encompass bias and exaggeration, supportive evidence for their case is to be found in a recent SSRC survey which found council tenants significantly less satisfied with their housing than owner-occupiers. However, the survey also found that the main source of dissatisfaction lay in the structure of the accommodation (notably damp) and in the quality of the neighbourhood. Council housing is seen as high in cost, poor in quality and structural amenities, and in an unsatisfactory neighbourhood environment. The survey report concluded: “If these defects are inseparable from municipal housing then presumably public subsidies for working class housing should be diverted from municipal building to municipal mortgages and to rehabilitating the stock of council dwellings”.

It is indeed the case that financing council house repairs has for a long time been subject to central government limitation as well as to reduction by rate- conscious local authorities. For a while local authorities were energetic in utilising improvement grant aid as a means of bringing older council houses nearer to modern standards. Both repair policies and improvement policies have been major targets in the current bout of Government cuts.

New ways of involving council tenants in estate management have become not just another aspect of the participatory craze but of considerable practical importance as evidence grows of the increasing unmanageability of council estates. However, if the SSRC survey quoted above is at all accurate, there may be only limited gains unless Cooperatives and the like have the resources to tackle environmental and structural causes of dissatisfaction. Some reports of early co-operative schemes suggest that not only have the costs of these schemes been enormous, but allocation and tenant selection have been constant sources of dispute. If co-operative schemes (like policies for selling council houses) bring benefit primarily through the appreciation of home value passing to an individual, not the council, the social impact of such policies will be very limited.

The majority of owner-occupiers are in a position of knowing how easily they could move if they wished. It is a relatively simple procedure to discover probable sale price, ease of sale and the prices and availability elsewhere. It is possible to calculate probable levels of mortgage and hence a decision on mobility. This is not to say, of course, that all owner-occupiers are equally able to be mobile, but, broadly speaking, owner-occupiers can know their chances of moving. Council tenants enjoy no such certainty. There are, of course, schemes for transfers and exchanges and the CHAC report mentioned above provides a good description of their scope and variety. But such schemes confer no rights, they are largely aids to management, and provide tenants with scant opportunity to plan and organise a move. For some the relative lack of freedom and mobility and choice in the council sector is its greatest disadvantage. In Birmingham transfers and exchanges account for almost half of all lettings but the elaborate system of opportunities for transfer are least for families estates.

A recent collection of essays has drawn attention to the significance of the block of flats in the history of council housing. One part of Rex and Moore's scheme of housing classes was to posit a certain style and type of home as part of a common value system. They certainly overstated the extent of a common value system and it is clearly true that there is variety in what is desired in housing. But they are undoubtedly correct in implying a central place for the forte and this is a theme taken further by Nicholas Taylor in his stimulating essay Village in the City. But in the 1960s the local authority planners and housing managers were overwhelmed by the supposed advantages of high-rise blocks and brought into being acre after acre of a new sort of estate. These would appear destined to become the albatross of housing managers in years to come. Meanwhile they must be let—to those who must rent. The apartment block has a respectable role to play in a comprehensive housing service for some special categories who find this sort of housing suitable for a phase of their life. Outside the council sector they exist with a level of amenity and convenience which makes them desirable housing for those who can choose so to live. In the council sector they are simply tower blocks, gaunt and forbidding, drab in their communal areas, in which the lift is a lumbering steel box of uncertain reliability. Here live many old persons, aghast at the contrast with life as it was in their neighbourhoods of old, and young families wondering how long they will have to remain. Given the nature of local authority housing registers, few would opt to live in a tower block by choice: the hope is that it will be a short phase before a move to somewhere desirable. However, the scale of high-rise flat building in cities has been such that from the point of view of managers, some people will have to get used to high-rise living and start enjoying it, for there are precious few options. Alternatively, we can expect here demolition of unwanted blocks of public housing. With so many unpopular units to let and so many needing council housing, scope for local authority managers to allocate according to choice or to manage freedom in exchange and mobility is and will remain severely limited.

A phase of despair

This is perhaps the nub of the present gloom that hangs over the council house sector: for many there is no choice, no escape, no access to anywhere else, no prospect of a different better home except another council house. They cannot shop around for a transfer or exchange. They cannot plan a move; they can only apply and hope. There is nowhere else to turn.

This sense of relative deprivation is reinforced by a number of themes in discussions of housing policy to the effect that the right and proper thing to do is to buy your own home: that is where privileges reside. The lengths to which authorities will go to assist mobility from the sector are becoming incredible. In Birmingham a former maisonette tenant paying less than £10 a week rent may become a half-tenant/half-mortgagee of a special type of construction (below Parker Morris standards) where outgoings are 1.70 a month. Participants in the scheme express delight and satisfaction: at twice the price a small house and garden you can call your own (is it?) is better than the bleak outlook from the fourth floor on a council estate.

Is this just a temporary phase of despair which will pass when the current economic crisis passes and a period of boom restores confidence? Or is it the drift of housing policy that the current crisis has hastened and hardened? It is surely something of a paradox that the situation of council tenants can be described in terms of plight and not of privilege, for the struggle and achievement for a growing council house sector has been a feature of Labour policies throughout the century: and the growth of the sector to account for nearly one in three of all houses is one index of the scale of the achievement. Is it now to be seriously questioned that this provision has not been redistributive, has not contributed to greater social equality?

A recent set of papers published by the Housing Workshop of the Conference of Socialist Economists explore these sorts of questions from a specifically Marxist perspective and provides some stimulating essays in iconoclasm. Indeed, these papers challenge the starting assumption of many of the studies noticed above by seeking to put the study of council housing, its provision, financing and problems firmly within its market context. The papers continually assert that the current housing crisis is not one that can be solved by improved or comprehensive management, although it is clear that there is considerable variation in local administrative practice which shows what might be achieved if the socialisation of housing provision proceeded beyond its first stage. When these authors bring into focus the enmeshment of council housing finance within the institutions of finance capital, the inability of a local authority to do more than appear to administer its own estate, and stress the bureaucratic and authoritarian administration needed to manage the seemingly inevitable shortage, they pick up some of the disputes which surrounded Rex's idea of housing class.

A continuing theme of socialist commentary is that Labour's long-term ideological commitment to high-quality subsidised working-class housing in social ownership was rapidly diluted after 1947. The achievement of the council-house sector in the 1950s and 1960s was always under the shadow of larger achievements and subsidies for the owner-occupied sector. The narrower purpose of council housing under post-war governments has been for “those who must rent”. In the socialist perspective “the disadvantages of local authority housing derive from the fact that it remains within a capitalist society, bureaucratically administered by an authoritarian state apparatus and still subject to the extortion of banker and landowner." This view finds room for both of those popular stereotypes presented at the outset. It notices, however, that the extent of subsidy provided to the tenant is certainly no greater than that paid to the typical owner-occupier. It also notices that the new high rent paid by the council tenant is to allow payments of interest to the providers of finance of council housing. It is a view which notes that the current drift of policy to limit council house building, increase rents and reduce local authority expenditure on the council sector, will promote great diversity in the quality and cost of council houses and give rise to allocative policies of decreasing flexibility as the nature of the stock affects what tenants are given, rather than being responsive to their needs. As such the focus of recent studies on the increasingly unmanageable estates and on the extent to which a council home can be a trap for the disadvantaged, not a means of access to a position of privilege, finds common empirical ground for those whose studies follow the conventional wisdom established by Rex and by Pahl and for those whose social perspective is of a more critical nature.

Originally published in the Political Quarterly, Volume 47, Issue 2, April 1976 (pp. 125-248).

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