British governments used to cough up for social housing. Not this one | Jonn Elledge

If politicians treated houses like they do roads and railways, regeneration wouldn’t be such a dirty word

Once upon a time, not that long ago, housing was largely what councils were for. In the years after the second world war, after all, public housing was intended to be an option for all who wanted it, as universal a welfare service as state education. And so, in the 1960s and 70s, visionary architects and idealistic planners alike flocked to local government: if you wanted to make your mark on the fabric of a city, this was the place to do it.

After the Thatcher government introduced right to buy, the political class began instead to treat council housing as a last-chance saloon – a place for that tiny sliver of the population too poor or too lacking in aspiration to get on and buy. What’s worse, councils were barred from using the proceeds of right to buy to build replacement housing. So they stopped building. In the mid-70s, councils were building as many as 150,000 new homes a year. In 2004-05, they built just 130.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2HYMesI