The devolution of housing production: Support and management

Abstract

It is only over the last three or four decades that governments of most countries of the world have assumed a responsibility in the production of housing. Previously the public sector’s housing activity was confined to the provision of accommodation for its military and some of its civil employees. Barracks, police quarters, cantonments, and civil lines were made available to government servants only while they were employed in the locality, invariably a very short time by comparison with the life of the buildings. Therefore there was little chance that any of the occupants could effectively participate in the design and construction of their housing or, in any significant way, in its maintenance and management. Thus, housing production was clearly seen as an engineering function and so, for civil staff, housing was the responsibility and a minor activity of departments or ministries of public works. The management of government housing was viewed as the administration of an inventory and the maintenance of allocation procedures the storekeeper functions of the quartermaster and was typically vested in a housing department closely connected to the civil service commission, or the ministry of the interior. Governments’ intervention in the housing provision of the vast majority of citizens not in its employ extended only to attempts at the control of private and community sector initiative in the declared interests of public health, safety and amenity. These functions brought about the advent of public health acts, building regulations, planning codes and development controls. While this is not the place to argue the appropriateness of these measures, it is worth recalling that almost no households in the low-income groups could afford to meet such rigorous standards set, nor could governments enforce them. Thus low-income, “substandard” housing areas, beyond the law, and consequently often beyond the reach of official welfare programmes, grew at a much faster rate than those that were officially recognised.