The Uneven Development of 'Social Rented Housing': Explaining the Historically Marginal Position of Housing Associations in Britain

Abstract

The first part of this paper is concerned with rethinking the notion of social rented housing, arguing that it is appropriate to refer to a dual social rented sector, both now and in the past, and to set municipal and non-municipal models of provision alongside the dominant consumption side models of mass and residual social housing. The idea of uneven development of social rented housing in Britain refers to the numerical dominance of local authority provision, and the insignificant quantitative contribution of housing associations and their predecessors until the last years of the 20th century. The second part of the paper poses the question of why the voluntary sector failed to thrive after 1918, and examines some historical evidence from four key periods up to the early 1960s. It is argued that the poor performance of these organisations immediately after 1918 led to them failing to overcome local authority opposition and civil service scepticism in the 1930s.