Successes, failures, and prospects for public housing policy in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses some of the main changes introduced for public housing in the United Kingdom since 1980. They include the sale of more than a quarter of the homes to their occupiers, large‐scale transfers of public housing into the ownership of new nonprofit organizations, a greater emphasis on resident involvement in the management of their homes, a switch in government support from producer subsidies to personal subsidies to the tenants, increased support for housing associations as alternative social housing providers, and new steps toward a more holistic approach to urban regeneration. As a result of these policies, coupled with economic and social change during the same period, public sector housing—and the social housing provided by housing associations—have increasingly become occupied by people having the lowest incomes and suffering the greatest difficulties. There is anxiety that this increasing concentration of deprivation within public housing estates will replicate problems of...