Growing Crisis and Contradiction In Home Ownership

Abstract

Contradictions and crises are emerging at a number of levels and for a number of different agencies in the home ownership process, notably for government, as the proponent of rapid increase in home ownership and for the building societies as the main agents of that increase. The promotion of home ownership and especially council house sales had proved a major electoral success; the proceeds of sales could be used to reduce the need for local authority borrowing and as a source of Exchequer revenue; and in the longer term, the switch from renting to home ownership was seen as reducing government’s role, responsibility and hence expenditure on housing. The biggest contradiction in the government’s approach to housing policy must be its attempt to increase home ownership rapidly and profoundly at a time when its economic policy accepts, if not creates, large-scale unemployment.