Full Description
Originally published in 1987 and now re-issued with a new preface, this book examines attempts by successive individuals and governments to overcome slum conditions and homelessness, to reform landlord-tenant relations and to provide sound modern dwellings with full amenities for those who need them. Its focus is on how those responsible for public housing concentrated their energies on buildings rather than management, on property rather than people, in sharp distinction to the women who played such an innovative and humanizing role in the early days of housing reform. Efforts to resolve public housing problems are examined in a study of twenty housing estates, and of the initiatives that local authorities have taken to reverse the sometimes overwhelming decay.
Contents
Part 1: The Origins of the Housing Service 1. Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Landlord Tradition 2. The Interwar Years 3. Post-war Mass Housing 4. Post-war Housing Departments 5. Housing for All or Housing of Last Resort? Part 2: A Survey of New Housing Problems 6. The Worst Estates 7. The Design of Unpopular Estates 8. The Management of Unpopular Estates: Allocations and Empty Property 9. Repairs, Rents, Cleansing and Caretaking Part 3: Changing the Landlord Tradition: Findings of the Survey 10. Local Offices on Unpopular Estates 11. Social Change 12. Summary of Main Themes and Conclusions: A Way Forward
