Anarchy 83/Tenants take over

Tenants take over

a new strategy for council tenants

COLIN WARD

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. 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

owner-occupied	public authority rented	privately rented
26%	13%	61%

By 1965 they had become

44.5%

28.5%

25%

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, were

46%

26%

28%

while another estimate, in terms of dwellings, gives

46%

33%

21%

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.” The London Borough of Kensington has 5% council tenants, while Dagenham has 67%.

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.” 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”.

HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS

The alternative to owner-occupation or council tenancy is to be found in the housing society movement, which has been called “Housing’s Third Arm”. If it is a third arm, it has so far been a regrettaby feeble one, for housing associations of all kinds had by 1962 provided only 1.3% of post-war housing. Between them they control 0.7% of the total housing stock. But since the only examples of tenant co-operative housing fall into this category, it is worth examining more closely.

When building societies first came into existence as organs of working-class mutual aid at the end of the 18th century, they were remarkably like the self-build housing societies of today, and very unlike the money-lending-pus-savings-bank organisations which are the modern building societies. They consisted of groups of people who saved to buy land to house themselves, and when the first house was completed, borrowed money on its security to build another, until all the members of the society were housed, at which point the society disbanded. In a sense they resembled the method of financing house purchase used by some groups of immigrants in this country today:

Particularly among Indians and Pakistanis, housing finance pools are found with a substantial membership—perhaps as many as 900—which meet periodically once a fortnight or once a month, and make calls of, say £10 on each member. Those who draw upon the fund thus created are subject thereafter to periodic calls until the whole amount drawn by them has been liquidated. Drawings under this system are substantial and may cover the whole purchase cost. Occasionally, West Indians operate on similar but less ambitious lines. … Their pooling arrangements usually only provide for the initial deposits necessary for house purchase, thus enabling them to “get off the ground”.

The building societies changed their character in the nineteenth century to become more permanent societies, separating the people who wished to save from those who wished to build. A new kind of society was founded in 1830, the Labourers’ Friendly Society for Improving the Conditions of the Labouring Classes. The early efforts of poor people to improve their own housing conditions failed to expand for lack of capital. Investors then, as now, found easier ways to get rich than by financing working-class housing. This is where the Victorian philanthropists moved in, satisfied with a “modest return” on their capital.

The housing society movement since then has never lost this “charitable” emphasis, and in this respect is in marked contrast to the co-operative housing associations of several other countries. Mr. Lewis Waddilove contrasts the situation here with that in Sweden, where the movement

depended strongly on the initiative of tenants it did not, as in the United Kingdom, become the instrument of liberal employers and philanthropists making provision for what were referred to as the “working classes”. The tenants’s unions of Sweden discovered that the best way of preventing the making of undue profits from a housing shortage and to raise housing standards was to build and administer their own hoes. As an example, in 1923, the tenants’ union of Stockholm became The Tenants’ Savings and Building Society and in the following year similar movements in other towns came together to form a National Association of Housing Societies known throughout Sweden by the initials HSB. … A second national body for housing associations has been formed by the trade unions in Sweden concerned with the building industry. HSB remains the largest national body and its very name measures out the difference between the Swedish and the British housing association movement. In Sweden the movement’s inspiration and drive come from the tenants; they save for the purpose of raising their own housing standards.

In Britain the initiative in the movement has come from philanthropists and others concerned to raise the housing standards of the “working class”. Save in the “self-build” societies, the initiative rests with the occupants of the houses who are simply the tenants of the association.

He describes how the HSB has built up not only resources of expert advice in building, planning and finance, “but has become a centre of research, the results of which can immediately be applied in its own large-scale activities. This means that the tiniest housing co-operative in a remote township” has access to the best of advice, architectural and technical, with the result that “the standard of design, workmanship and finish are well in advance of comparable dwellings in this country. … So competent is the research, technical and even manufacturing organisation of HSB that municipalities have been glad to avail themselves of it. Many local authorities’ housing schemes are in fact planned and executed by HSB; in some areas municipal houses are built and managed by a ‘municipal company’ on the directorate of which the local authority and HSB are represented”.

In Britain, at least until the initiation in 1966 of the Co-ownership Development Society, the nearest thing we have had to HSB has been the National Federation of Housing Societies, which gets a meagre government grant, and to which are affiliated 1,530 societies providing general family housing, old people’s housing, industrial housing (sponsored by industrial firms for their employees) as well as self-build, “cost-rent” and tenant co-operative schemes. Housing societies were long ago granted the same treatment as local authorities so far as facilities for long-term loans and qualification for subsidies are concerned.

All the political parties express their support for the housing society idea, and it was amid general approval that the Housing Act of 1961 (in Section 7) made available £25 million for direct government loans at the then current rate of interest, to be administered through the National Federation to housing societies building new dwellings to be kept available for cost-rent letting, without subsidy. The Minister described his £25 million as a “pump-priming” operation, meaning that he wanted to encourage private capital to go the same way. This of course was the same pious hope that was expressed by the philanthropists a hundred years ago, and it met with the same lack of success.

Then in 1964, the government set up the Housing Corporation with Admiral Sir Caspar John as its head, and offices in Park Lane, with power to dispense another £100 million in loans to housing societies for both cost-rent and co-ownership schemes.

The results of both these attempts to stimulate the growth of housing societies has been disappointing.

The Corporation’s last report showed that by the end of September 1966, 150 cost-rent projects, involving 6,932 dwellings and costing about £26.7 millions, had been approved together with a further 42 co-ownership schemes, had been registered with the corporation. Commencing on the implications of the report, which declared that a large potential market exists for co-ownership housing, Sir Caspar John admitted that co-ownership housing had developed slowly, adding hopefully that “things have speeded up tremendously in the past six months”.

I have referred to the rate of expansion of the housing society movement as disappointing, but perhaps the surprising thing is that it expanded at all, as so many legal and fiscal obstacles stood in its way. In the first place the original cost-rent scheme could only benefit people with an income (five years ago) above about £1,500 a year, while such people, because of the system of taxation and tax allowances would have found freehold house purchase a better proposition. Secondly, and partly because of the difficulty of finding a legal framework—even after 100 years of the Co-operative Movement—for the concept of co-ownership, the whole system was so complex that only groups containing someone with specialist knowledge were likely even to understand the scheme. The Milner Holland Report criticised the absurdity of the situation: “It seems to us that if non-profit housing associations are to make an effective contribution to the most urgent needs—and it is widely accepted that they should—then the rationalisation of the fiscal and legal provisions governing their activity is urgently needed; at present these seem to have the effect of discouraging the very associations which are equipped to give effective help in the area where it is most needed.” And elsewhere the Report declared that “We have been unable to find any justification for the unfavourable tax treatment of housing associations and we conclude that unless the tax burden is lifted, the contribution to the supply of rented accommodation by housing associations will be seriously hampered.”

Several steps have been taken recently which, in theory, should improve the situation&mash;the Housing Subsidies Bill, the option mortgages scheme, the prospect of assistance from the Land Commission and of more flexible cash borrowing arrangements, but none of these in practice has so far affected the prospect for housing societies.

THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT AND HOUSING

The Labour Party issued in 1956 a policy statement on Housing which provided, amongst other proposals, for the municipalisation of urban rented property, a policy which was quietly dropped in the 1960s (although of course, both Labour and Conservative local authorities have exercised their powers to acquire rented properties by compulsory purchase from unsatisfactory private landlords, and recent Labour Party policy policy statements have demanded that local authorities should use these powers more freely). The Labour Party statement was followed in 1959 by that of the Co-operative Party (debated and approved by the Bridlington Conference that year) which dissented from it in important respects. Labour had dismissed the idea of placing the management and development of municipalised dwellings in the hands of local housing associations, declaring that it was “sure that the local authorities can undertake this great new responsibility”. But the Co-operative statement pointed out that, “if the local authority is to be the only landlord within a given area, there is an obvious possibility of the general application of general rules that do not permit sufficient variation to meet individual requirements”. The statement expressed the hope that “local authorities will be more ready than in the past to devolute some of their management functions”, and recommended the formation of a national co-operative development housing organisation to promote co-operative housing, recognising that “the Co-operative retail societies themselves cannot give the initial financial impetus to this new development in co-operation”.

The 1961 Co-operative Party policy statement reiterated the point that “very little change of policy would be necessary to give practical encouragement to the formation of co-operative housing societies” and went on to describe these changes. Later in the same year Harold Campbell’s pamphlet Housing Co-ops and Local Authorities was published. Here he outlined the powers which local authorities possessed under the Housing Act, 1957, to promote and assist housing associations, described the co-operative schemes which already existed, and the achievements of co-operative housing movements in Sweden, Denmark and the United States, and set out the needs in this country: a powerful promotional organisation, persuasion of local authorities, mobilisation of financial resources, and changes in the legal structure. In 1966 the Co-ownership Development Society was set up and has already fostered five co-operative housing societies, with Mr. Campbell as its chairman. In April 1967 he was appointed to the board of the Housing Corporation. Advocates of co-operative housing who have waited so long for the movement to get off the ground will hope that this appointment will bear fruit. What is missing is the demand from below.

CHANGING THE COUNCIL ESTATE

But however long it takes to develop a co-operative housing movement in this country, must we necessarily assume that the existing municipal housing estates, the homes of well over a quarter of the population, must continue to be administered paternalistically from above as though the vast social changes of the post-war world had not taken place? The Parker Morris Committee, drawing up new standards for housing, did not think so, reminding us that “It must be admitted that many other European countries reach a far higher standard in their estate layout than we do, very largely through the use of housing associations, which take full responsibility for both the initial landscaping and its maintenance”. And the Central Housing Advisory Committee reminded local authorities that “tenants today are much more representative of the community as a whole and are, for the most part, independent, reliable citizens who no longer require the support and guidance which was often thought to be necessary in the past. Local authorities must recognise that this is a major social change which is likely to become more marked in the years ahead.” (The Committee’s italics.)

The Committee’s report went on: “To think of the tenants of today as though their circumstances and needs are the same as those of tenants of a generation ago would be unreal. Similarly, to expect methods of management designed to meet the needs of tenants in the 1930s to be suitable for those of the 1950s or 1970s would, we think, be quite wrong. &hellip” But what of the tenants of the 1960s? Has there been a change in the attitudes of housing management? It would be difficult to find evidence for this.

The time is ripe for change. But change of what kind? I believe that it should be a radical change to tenant control, and several of our foremost authorities on housing share this opinion. Mr. Waddilove, for example, makes the same unfavourable comparison as did the Parker Morris Committee, between the appearance of housing estates in this country and on the Continent, and draws the same conclusion:

The visitor to housing estates on the Continent comments most often on the attractiveness of their layout, the care with which common land is cultivated, and the harmony of external decoration. The claim of the co-operative association is that it combines the sense of ownership and the security of tenure of the owner-occupied house with an equally strong sense of responsibility for, and interest in, the neighbourhood as a whole. Moreover it does this as a by-product of its normal organisation; in Britain in new estates we have attempted to achieve the same result by all kinds of artificial stimuli to neighbourhood responsibility.

The sense of responsibility comes from being responsible, and people can only be responsible for their own lives and their own environment if they are in control of it. Similarly Professor Donnison declares:

… we need a system that will provide adequate housing of various types with complete security of tenure. Down payments should be negligible but subsequent payments may well be higher than council rents. The occupier should be given responsibility and incentives for maintaining and improving his own house, but should be insured against the costs of major repairs. Some body responsible to the occupiers themselves should retain a continuing interest in the character and development of the immediate neighbourhood and might provide open space and other shared amenities for its residents. In fact a way must be found to continue the advantages of owner-occupation and tenancy, both in new housing and in existing property.

The points which require emphasis in his conclusions are that the overall body should be responsible to the occupiers themselves and that it is not enough to develop this new kind of tenure for future application: it must be applied to existing property.

Mr. J. B. Cullingworth raises similar questions, in fact a whole series of them:

Could not tenants be given a greater degree of responsibility for the upkeep of their houses and, probably more important, for the general appearance and amenities of housing estates? There is a growing discussion of the value of “citizen-participation” in urban renewal in the rehabilitation of “twilight areas”. Is not a similar line possible with council housing estates? Surely it is not only owner-occupiers who are hit by the “do-it-yourself revolution” and who have a real concern for their houses and the environment in which they live. More fundamentally, why do we need council housing? If it is a question of ensuring that low-income families can obtain good housing at a price which they can afford, could not this be achieved by a system of family housing allowances? If it is a question of ensuring that sufficient houses are actually built, could not local authorities simply confine their attention to housebuilding and hand over the completed houses to associations of tenants, housing co-operatives, housing societies, or even (with the aid of generous mortgage facilities) to individual families? A “reserve” of houses could be kept for special needs, but it need not be on the vast scale of today.

With his reference to housing allowances as an alternative to manipulating the rents of low-income families, and to the sale of council houses to individual tenants, r. Cullingworth is raising issues which I have to discuss elsewhere, but he is clearly among those who see a better future in self-management than in municipal management.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TENANTHOOD

Psychological generalisations about whole groups of people are bound to be meaningless, especially when the group to which a person belongs has been selected by such a variety of factors, most of them quite outside those of individual personality, as the choice of house tenure. In fact, of course, for most people it is not a matter of choice but of grabbig whatever opportunity has been theirs, of getting a roof over their heads.

Yet the generalisations are made. “Property owners,” says Ferdynand Zweig, “often struck me as a brighter, more daring and enterprising breed than the rest. … I often assked how people felt when they became house-owners. … The overwhelming majority felt deeply about it,” and the words which came to their lips were satisfaction, self-confidence, freedom, independence. And James Tucker, describing the effects of segregation by house tenure and the frightening animosities which exist between owner-occupiers and council tenants, feels able to isolate certain characteristics of council tenants:

Now, what of the people? There are two dominant characteristics, one at least of which I cannot claim to be the first to have noticed. It is unneighbourliness, often resulting in loneliness; the other seems to be based on an acceptance of the notion that people in council houses have failed, haven’t quite made it, and is frequently expressed as a frustrated desire to buy a house off the estate.

Many council tenants speak with gentle pride of how little they have to do with people living near them. … In some measure it may be a means of self-protection against neighbours not considered up to the social mark. But, more important, it is a defensive assertion against the low social standing of estates: “Look! We can be as unfriendly as anybody.” People ape what they assume to be superior ways of behaving; suburban ways, for instance. It is tragic that it should be so and leads to great unhappiness. …

In so far as we may consider the generalisations to be valid, we can see that they arise from the social situations in which people find themselves. The walls or fences which in a number of notorious instances have been built to separate privately-owned from council-owned sections of the same estate are an extreme manifestation of ordinary English snobbery, but they make it devastatingly clear to the more vulnerable kind of municipal tenant that in they eyes of millions of his fellow-countrymen he is a second-class citizen. The way in which his relationship with his landlord intensifies this feeling has been made clear by Stanley Alderson:

… the usual balance of power between landlord and tenant is everywhere upset by the condition of housing shortage. But the problems are much more acute in council tenancy. It is not only that the council tenant is even less free to move than the private tenant. The private tenant can at least hate his landlord for taking advantage of the conditions of shortage for his own financial gain. The council tenant knows that he is fortunate in having his house, and feels that he has been done a favour. The local authority which is his landlord never does anything for its own financial gain. It always acts in its wisdom for its tenants’ own advantage. In the long run, power employed paternalistically provokes far greater resentment than power employed selfishly or even antagonistically. Because there is no satisfactory outlet for it, the resentment accumulates. …

Worse still, every attempt to rationalise rent policy serves to exacerbate this paternalistic relationship, for Mr. Alderson goes on:

It is often said of industrial strikes over wages that their real cause is repressed resentment deriving from day-to-day industrial relationships. Similarly the rent strikes that followed the introduction of differential rent schemes must have given release to repressed resentment deriving from landlord-tenant relations. The protests against a means test were not merely rationalisations of a reluctance to pay higher rents. Differential rents were resented because they foisted on the local authorities the ultimate paternalist responsibility of deciding how much pocket money their tenants should be allowed to keep. Local authorities deserve sympathy for their reluctance to exercise this responsibility. It is an imperative that they should be relieved of it as that council tenants who can afford to should pay economic rents. The council tenant who needs financial assistance should receive it through some other organ of the state, established to assist private tenants and owner-occupiers as well. He could then claim his assistance without loss of dignity, and he would always pay his full rent to his landlord. Equally his landlord would always be entitled to claim it from him.

We need to find a system of tenure which changes this psychology of dependency for one of independence. One which, as Harold Campbell puts it, “combines private enterprise and mutual aid in a unique form of social ownership which puts a premium on personal responsibility and individual initiative”.

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“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

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references and sources

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