New Labour, Same Old Tory Housing Policy?

Abstract

For the first time in 23 years, the government has produced a Green Paper on housing Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All which has 'set out [the New Labour] vision for housing in the new Millennium'.' In the intervening period, housing policy has not remained static indeed, the landscape of housing policy has been dramatically altered by a series of White Papers.2 The role of local authorities has shifted towards 'enabling', rather than providing, new social housing; housing associations which, along with local housing companies, are now termed Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) have become major providers of social housing; the private rented sector has been deregulated; considerable levels of private finance have been levered into the social housing system; demand for social housing has bottomed out in certain areas; mortgage finance of owner occupation has undergone dramatic shifts as a result of deregulation during the 1980s.3 New Labour itself, prior to the Green Paper, has progressed its own housing-related policies such as Best Value,4 alteration of the local authority financial regime, allowing councils to phase in the spending of capital receipts from the sale of their stock on specified projects,6 and various initiatives derived from the Social Exclusion Unit concerned with neighbourhood renewal.7 Indeed, the government is keen to locate the Green Paper as one policy statement in an ongoing stream of policy developments.8