Housing Politics in the United Kingdom: Power, Planning and Protest

✍ Scribed by Brian Lund

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 370
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

With rapid population growth, a long-term dearth in new housing construction, the emergence of ‘generation rent’ and rising homelessness, the issue of housing in the UK is considered complex, open-ended and intractable. Using insights from public choice theory, the new institutionalism and social constructionism Housing Politics in the United Kingdom locates the contemporary ‘housing question’ in historically entrenched power relationships involving markets, planning, and territorial electoral politics. Written to complement the 3rd edition of the author’s bestselling Understanding housing policy (forthcoming, 2017), this book will be essential reading for students of Housing, Social Policy, Social History, Urban Studies, Planning and Political Science.

✦ Table of Contents

HOUSING POLITICS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. Housing and politics
Housing the people
The political dimension
Industrialisation
Globalisation
Capitalism
The ‘new institutionalism’
Social constructionism
Public choice theory
Promotional interest groups
Economic interest groups
Consumer groups
‘Think tanks’
Political parties
The ‘media’
Local government
Devolved government
The voters
The UK Parliament
The European Union
Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations
Government departments
Policy networks and policy communities
The ‘core executive’
Conclusion
2. Land politics
Land taxation
Lloyd George and land politics
Labour and land
The Conservatives and land
The Land Commission
The Community Land Act 1975
The Community Infrastructure Levy
Planning
Planning and the Second World War
Post-war planning
Green belts
Planning and New Labour
The Coalition government
Planning and economic growth
Land release: the developer’s role
Mansion Tax
The 2015 general election
Conclusion
3. Urban renewal:fencing the cities
Nineteenth-century public health politics
The rookery and the slum
Dispersal, regulation, ventilation and improvement
The ‘Residuum’
A ‘sewage’ policy
Overcrowding
Rehabilitation
‘Sewage’ again
Improving property
Area selectivity
‘It took a riot’
Property before people
Private sector improvement
Challenging cities
New Labour
The Coalition government
The 2015 Conservative government
Conclusion
4. Private landlords: ‘Rachmans’ or ‘Residential property-owners’?
Slum landlords
The rates issue
Rent control
The Rent Act 1957
‘Fair’ rents
Withering on the vine
A market in rented accommodation?
Buy-to-Let (BTL)
New Labour
The Right to Buy and private landlordism
The Coalition government and ‘generation rent’?
Institutional investment in private landlordism
Regulation
Rent control
Housing Benefit expenditure
Private landlordism versus homeownership
Conclusion
5. A property-owning democracy?
Suburban politics
‘Homeownership ideology’
Tax relief on mortgage interest
Labour and homeownership
Selling council houses
Lending competition
Ending tax relief on mortgage interest
Boom
Bust
The Coalition government
Green housing
Homeownership and the 2015 Conservative government
Conclusion
6. Eclipsing council housing
Pauperising the working class and undermining private enterprise?
The Housing and Town Planning etc Act 1919
Subsidies and standards
Local governance
The war years
Universal
Residual high-rise
The strategic housing authority
Goodbye council housing 1: Conservative policy
Goodbye council housing 2: New Labour
Exit, Voice and Loyalty
Welcome home?
The Coalition government: ‘welfare’ housing
The 2015 Conservative government
Conclusion
7. Bending the ‘Third Arm’: politicians and housing associations
Hybrids
Housing the poor?
Housing association politics between the wars
Cost-rent and co-ownership societies
‘Genuine’ cooperatives
Consensus politics?
Market politics
Stock transfer
The diversity and equality agenda
New Labour and ‘social entrepreneurs’
The changing nature of housing associations
Social cohesion
The Coalition government
The 2015 Conservative government
Conclusion
8. Homelessness politics
The ‘deserving’ poor
‘Masterless’ men
Paternalism versus ‘rational’ economics
The ‘new’ Poor Law
Casual wards
Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress (1909)
‘Hidden from history’: homelessness between the wars
The welfare state and homelessness
The Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977
‘Structure’ or ‘agency’?
Perverse incentives
The Conservatives and rough sleeping
New Labour and homelessness
The Coalition government and homelessness
The 2015 Conservative government
Conclusion
9. Devolution: where is the difference?
Scotland
The Scottish government
Wales
Northern Ireland
Conclusion
10. Conclusion: power, planning and protest
Power
Planning
Protest
The ‘wicked’ politics of housing
References
Index