After this period, social housing, and the rhetoric surrounding it, changed; evolving from its once proud stature to something only those in need should use. Some say this change lead to the beginnings of the demonization of social housing. In 1980 Margaret Thatcher’s Government introduced ‘right to buy’. During the 1970’s the UK saw some local authorities voluntarily sell some of their housing stock but the new legislation that came hand in hand with right to buy made it obligatory for local authorities to sell their properties, at a discount, if long standing tenants wished to own their homes. The legislation was politically controversial and lead to strikes by the National and Local Government Officers’ Association who refused to process …show more content…
The ‘attack’ on social housing by Thatcher’s Government came from their belief that council and social housing was an unnecessary burden on the economy of the United Kingdom, ‘for the Conservative Government, council housing represented all that was profligate in public spending, an egregious intervention in the market, and featherbedding of the undeserving’ (Ravetz, p200, 2001). Thatcher introduced the idea that every person within society should want to own their own homes, she made this a reality through her Right to Buy policy. It has been argued that the drive behind the public ‘want’ to owns one’s own home links to the perception of power as it is the belief of some that ‘home owners are object and subject of disciplinary power’, with home ownership comes some sort of power as the owner is not answerable to a land lord (Craig, M, Gurney. 1999). This also helps to explain why people residing within social housing have long been seen to be at the bottom of society with very little power; some would say that as they do not own their own homes they have less responsibility and this has led to the assumption that people residing within social housing are lazy or in some way …show more content…
In a speech given by Mr. Blair in 1998, he described the state of the UK housing market as ‘shameful to us as a nation’, referring to the United Kingdom. In 2001, the Scottish Executive reduced the maximum discount down to £15,000 whilst increasing the maximum length of tenancy before one was eligible to apply for Right to Buy to five years. That same year allegations arose claiming that loopholes within the Right to Buy Policy where being abused by property developers who were allegedly bribing tenants to buy their homes and rent them out at market rates (Benjamin Disraeli,
The importance of social context in Land Law and the reforms which have occurred as a result cannot be ignored or their significance understated. In particular is the impact of the shift in the twentieth century to ‘emergence of a property owning, particularly a real-property-mortgaged-to-a-building-society-owning-democracy’. Such growth could hardly have been anticipated when the LPA 1925 was drafted and subsequently became statute. As a consequence of this growth the doctrine of the resulting trust and to a greater extent, the constructive trust became a robust mechanism by which non legal owners could establish beneficial interests in the home. Swadling comments on the ‘complete change in attitude’ between the emphasis on security of ownership of the home in Boland and the free marketability of land which we see in Flegg. He states ‘one wonders what has happened to the demands of social justice which justified their Lordships decision in 1980 (in Boland) over such a brief passage of time’. Did the House of Lords fail to resolve the very practical issue with which they were presented that had evolved over the passage of social change since the drafting of the 1925 legislation?
The connection between poor living conditions, low income families, and inequality of varying groups go hand in hand when dealing with poverty as discussed in Evicted by Matthew Desmond. These issues are often swept under the rug for those not immersed in the situation and can even be unknown. There is gender inequality which can affect every aspect of life, including dwelling. There is also racial inequality which also renders the quality of life. Both themes have a deeper meaning and are connected at the source of poor education and job discrimination.
In the Pulitzer prize-winning novel Evicted, sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight families as he exposes how the lack of affordable housing perpetuates a state of poverty. He even goes so far as to assert that it is eviction that is a cause of poverty, not the other way around (Desmond 229). While this latter argument is as engrossing and it is striking, analyzing it with justice is simply not possible within the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, it is these two factors—inescapable poverty and eviction—that engender an unrelenting condition of financial, emotional, and communal instability, effectively hindering any chance of upward mobility.
In the Late nineteenth century the population was growing at a rapid pace. The country had people flooding the biggest cities in the country such as New York City and Chicago. These populations were gaining more and more people every single year and the country has to do something to make places for these people to live. The government would go on to create urban housing programs. These programs were created to make homes for these people to live in. At the time it provided a place for people to live but as the populations grew it became a more cramped and rundown area because of the large populations in one place. These reforms eventually led to these areas becoming dangerous, they were rundown, and it created a hole that was difficult for people to get out of.
Jackson highlights the steps taken by President Hoover’s Administration to avoid being forced into the creation of American public housing. He leads us through the fight to prevent public housing into Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, where we get the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration. Jackson argues that these two administrations revolutionized home financing. At this point, Jackson shows us how prejudices and a perceived need for segregation influenced the Federal Housing Administration, which gives us the phenomena observed by Mohl in his articles. Further along in his article, and after a case study of St. Louis, Jackson makes the assumptions that the federal policies not only favored the suburbs, but also preferred neighborhoods given a “B” grade. He also claims that private lenders were influenced by the Federal Housing Administration. Moving on into the second half of his article, we see how public housing got its start. Jackson notes that while public housing was successful in providing affordable housing to poorer Americans, it was less than successful through the eyes of its supporters. In agreement with Mohl, Jackson finds that public housing reinforced
The lack of available social housing is mainly due to stock levels steadily diminishing each year since 1980, after tenants bought nearly half-a-million council houses under the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme. This coupled with the decline in house building; which is currently at its lowest level since 1946, has brought about a shameful lack of affordable public housing (Turffrey, 2010).
Kennedy A. (2014) Castle Vale Housing Action Trust: Lessons in Regenerating Communities Lecture, University of Birmingham.
Those very same influences may lead to the exploitation of the poorer class, allowing outsiders with sufficient resources to assimilate into British society. Therefore, making the possession of immovable property a requirement for political participation supports the Grandees’ motives in making a society that is not easily influenced by those with prope... ... middle of paper ... ...having it either ignored or taken away is unfathomable. The ability of the Grandees to not only dictate what consent is relevant, but to prohibit political participation as well exemplifies how far the ideal of democracy has come. However, when looking at what England had suffered through, the actions of the Grandees showed that hard times call for drastic measures.
Compare and contrast the ways in which housing inequalities are discussed from the perspectives of social policy and criminology, and economics (TMA 02)
A house is simply a structure where one lives, sleeps and eats. A home is a structure accumulated with love, memories, and lessons learned. “Homes have stopped being homes. Now they are real estate.” (Quindlen) These structures are no longer viewed as places of experience and reminiscence, they are given a literal and unemotional purpose. Perhaps the reason as to why nearly one million people are homeless is because they are no longer provided with the pure substance of what a home represents. A home is “everything” , one cannot be a fulfilled individual without one for it offers a sense of self, demonstrates a loving relationship and provides an unfailing feeling of entitlement.
Sidney, Mara S. 2003. Unfair Housing: How National Policy Shapes Community Action. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas.
This paper will be predominantly focusing on public housing within Ontario. Not only will it look at the basics of Ontario but examine more directly on Regent Park within Toronto. It will discuss what public housing is and the explanation for why it exists, the government housing programs that are present with regards to public housing and the results of the government programs. The Purpose of this essay is to argue that the problem of public housing will never
...ss is hard to qualify in a world where the acquisition of material goods masquerades for success. A home is a material object that exists within a concrete reality. It exists with its own qualities of a house built of materials that do change and degrade over time. The costs of homeownership are harder to dismiss when one becomes disillusioned with the effects of a lack of attention to those costs.
Homelessness has not always been such a substantial issue. Homelessness “did not emerge until the 1980s” (Stergiopoulos et al., 2016, p.1). “There are between 700,000 to 800,000 people that are homeless on any given night” (Stergiopoulos et al., 2016, p.4). This issue has many involving factors; the following discussion will answer the question created by Open Arms Ministry of are there examples of effective programs, coalition, cities, communities that eliminate or attempted to eliminate homelessness? To prepare, there will be a definition of homelessness, new homelessness, usual care and a description of the issue of homelessness. This will be continued by the discussion of effective strategies that have helped end homelessness
The housing market crash was a response to a chain of businesses and people who believed that the old laws of banking were no longer important. Banks were no longer required to hold on to mortgages for 30 years which gave them the ability to sell off to other companies, without concern for the mortgage holders. David Harvey, a renowned geographer, warned us of this problem, stating that “labor markets and consumption function more as an outcome of search for financial solutions to the crisis-tendencies of capitalism, rather than the other way around. This would imply that the financial system has achieved a degree of autonomy from real production unprecedented in capitalism’s history, carrying capitalism into an era of equally unprecedented dangers” (Coe, Kelly, and Yeung, 2013)