Anarchy 83/Tenants take over
Tenants take over
a new strategy for council tenants
Ours is a society in which, in every field, one group of people makes decisions, exercises control, limits choices, while the great majority have to accept these decisions, submit to this control and act within the limits of these externally imposed choices. It happens in work and leisure, politics, and education, and nowhere is it more evident than in the field of housing. This article is concerned with one particular aspect of the housing situation. It presents the arguments for a tenant take-over, for the transfer of control of municipal housing from the local authorities to tenants’ associations. Although more than a quarter of the population of this country live in municipally owned houses and flats, there is not a single estate controlled by its tenants, apart from a handful of co-operative housing societies. At the moment an argument is going on between the two major political parties over the issue of the sale of council houses to tenants. From the point of view of increasing people’s control of their own environment this is a sham battle, because it affects only a tiny minority of tenants. At the moment too, in consequence of the changes in the structure of local government in London, the Greater London Council is planning a phased transfer of a large proportion of its housing stock to the London Boroughs. It plans to transfer about 70,000 houses and flats in 1969. Discussion of the control of housing is in the air, and no time is more propitious than the present for raising the genuinely radical demand for tenant control and tenant responsibility.
The facts and opinions presented here are intended as ammunition for such a demand.
THE MODES OF HOUSE TENURE
The ways in which householders hold their houses in Britain are limited. They are in fact more limited than in any other European country except Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Roumania.[1] The three modes of tenure in this country are owner-occupation, council tenancy and tenancy from a private landlord. The sole exception to this is, of course, ownership by a housing association, and this includes the only examples we have of co-operative housing. Statistically it is insignificant. The proportions between these three tenure groups have changed, and are changing, rapidly. For Great Britain as a whole the percentages in 1947 were[2]
By 1965 they had become[3]
The figures differ according to whether a dwelling or a household is being counted and according to the definitions used, and they are also different for various parts of Britain. For example, the figures for England only in 1964, counting households, wereCite error: Invalid <ref> tag;
invalid names, e.g. too many
while another estimate, in terms of dwellings,[4] gives
The proportions of council-owned dwellings varies greatly. “The Newcastle Corporation controls two out of every five of the city’s houses. In Greenock, on the West Coast of Scotland, half the population live in council houses.”[4] The London Borough of Kensington has 5% council tenants, while Dagenham has 67%.[5]
The general trend is clear, and, since it concerns a commodity so basic, durable and socially important as housing, it is one of the dramatic social changes of this century. Private renting, which before the First World War accounted for over 90% of households, is declining rapidly for reasons which are well known. Just as rapidly owner-occupation and renting from local authorities is increasing. The proportionate increase of these two tenure groups depends of course, on government policy, as well as on opportunity and increasing affluence. The post-war Labour government, through building licensing and a quota system, put the emphasis on building by local authorities. The Conservative governments of the 1950s and early 1960s changed the emphasis: “Under the Labour government only one new house in six was built for sale to a private buyer: under the Tory government two out of every three were built for sale.”[4] The policy of the present government is that by 1970 the proportions of council houses built for rent and private houses built for sale should be equal. It is pledged to stimulate and facilitate both forms of tenure. Virtually no new house building by private enterprise since the war has been for private letting. This is why privately rented property is usually anonymous with old, run-down property. The bulk of Britain’s slum housing is in the privately rented sector.
Thus “the range of choice open to the family in Britain seeking a modern house is more limited than is the case almost anywhere else in Europe”.[1]
“It is curious that left-wing councils, whose members can hardly be unaware of the advantages of co-operative systems, still maintain a rigidly paternalistic attitude to housing management.”
- architectural review, November 1967
references and sources
<references>
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lewis E. Waddilove: Housing Associations (P.E.P. Report, 1962).
- ↑ P. G. Gray: The British Household (The Social Survey, 1949).
- ↑ Ministry of Housing and Local Government. Parliamentary written answer, November 11, 1965.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Robert Millar: The New Classes: The New Patterns of British Life (Longmans, 1966).
- ↑ Sir Milner Holland (chairman): Report of the Committee on Housing in Greater London (HMSO, 1965).
