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A Long Term View of Housing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

L. Needleman
L. Needleman*
Affiliation:
National Institute Department of Social and Economic Research, University of Glasgow
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Extract

This article discusses some of the factors that will affect house building in England and Wales during the next twenty years. It is hardly possible to predict the demand for new houses, as it is for consumer durables like cars and domestic appliances, by reference to changes in incomes and prices. Governments in Britain (as in most other wealthy countries) have taken the view that housing is, up to a point, a social responsibility and should not be left to the free play of market forces. Private rents have been controlled; most of the new houses since the war have been built by local authorities to be let at subsidised rents; and certain minimum standards have been laid down both for new public housing and for existing privately owned houses. Hence the cost of housing to the occupier, and the supply of new houses, have been largely dominated, directly or indirectly, by public policy; and the size of the house building programme is likely to continue to be, at least partly, a political decision.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 18 , November 1961 , pp. 19 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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References

Note (1) page 19 Dicks-Mireaux, O'Herlihy and others, (11), Stone and Rowe, (58), pages 423-443.

(2) The extent to which Governments accept this respon sibility is discussed in United Nations Economic and Social Council, (65).

(3) The General Register Office projections for total popu lation in 1970, made in 1960, were higher by 2 million people, or almost 4 1/2 per cent, than those made in 1950. But almost all the difference in the projections for 1970 was accounted for by changes in the estimate of the population under 20 years old, which was revised upward by almost 14 per cent between 1950 and 1960, compared with an upward revision of less than 1 per cent for the rest of the population. See General Register Office, (23), 4th quarter 1950, table 4, page 35, and (23), 4th quarter 1960, Appendix D, page 24.

Note (1) page 20 Household ‘in this article is used in the sense of private household’, defined in the Census as ‘one or more persons occupying a house or a separate part of a house, flat or apartment, etc. Thus a boarder or visitor counted as part of the household, but a lodger who did not board with the household was regarded as constituting a separate household for census purposes’. General Register Office, (18), page 8.

(2) General Register Office, (20), pages cxxviii and cxxix.

(3) Winnick, (70), chapter 8; these are age-specific headship rates only.

Note (1) page 21 That is, 1951 headship rates are applied to the 1980 population estimates, and the figure of households so obtained is increased by just over 5 per cent : this gives the figure of 16 million.

(2) Shepherd, (54), pages 19-20.

(3) It is roughly estimated that there might be about 2.4 million one-person households in 1980 (Appendix, note 7, table 11, page 35)-a very considerable rise on the 1951 figure of 1.4 million. It is because of this very sharp increase in the number of one-person households that the number of separate occupied dwellings required is expected to rise slightly more slowly than the number of households.

Note (1) page 22 United States Department of Commerce, (67). The percentage of dwellings which were vacant and available for renting or sale, or which had been rented or sold and were awaiting occupancy, varied between 2.1 per cent in 1950 and about 3.6 per cent in the first quarter of 1960. The percentage of the population that moved house each year fluctuated only between 19.1 per cent in 1949/50 and 21.2 per cent in 1950/51.

(2) The results of an analysis of the National Registration statistics covering the late 1940s were published in Newton and Jeffrey, (48) and in Rowntree, (52). A thorough and more recent (1958) survey is described in Donnison, Cockburn and Corlett, (12).

(3) The number of movers was underestimated because the movers who moved only a short distance and did not cross a local boundary or change their food retailers were not caught in the National Registration net. The underestimation may have been considerable. In the Donnison, Cockburn and Corlett study, of the households that moved, 38 per cent moved within walking distance of their previous home, (12), table 31, page 66.

(4) On average every 8 moves represent 5 different persons moving’, Rowntree, (52), page 11.

Note (1) page 23 In the United States there is a monthly vacancy survey, published quarterly (66).

(2) General Register Office, (21), table C, page 7, and table F, page 9.

(3) General Register Office, (21), table F, page 9.

(4) General Register Office, (21), page 8.

Note (1) page 24 Ministry of Housing and Local Government, (35), table VIII.

(2) Ministry of Housing and Local Government, (36).

(3) For a criticism of the value of the slum clearance pro grammes as an indication of the aggregate replacement needs, and on the whole question of replacement needs, see Cullingworth, (7), chapter V, particularly page 51. See also McCulloch, (45), pages 162-172.

(4) It would not be difficult to fill this important gap in our knowledge. The techniques exist. A system of assessing housing deficiencies by scoring for each defect on a standard list has been tested and found to work smoothly in the United States. The data are comparable and easily pro cessed for analysis. An account of the system is given in American Public Health Association, (1).

(5) See Gavin Lyall, (44), and Sanitary Inspectors Association, (53), paragraph 30.

(6) Of the 850 thousand considered in 1955-56 by local authorities in England and Wales to be unfit for human habitation, most though not all were built before 1880. Ministry of Housing and Local Government, (33), page 3, paragraph 9.

(7) See (62), which describes working class houses in 94 towns in 1905. For plans of typical working class dwellings at York at the turn of the century, see Rowntree, (51), chapter VI.

(8) Many of these houses have not been improved since they were built. In 1951, of the 13 million households in England and Wales, almost 5 million (37 per cent) had no fixed bath and 1 million (8 per cent) had no water closet.

(9) The bricks and mortar used in working class houses in the third quarter of the century, if not later, were often of a bad porous quality. See the evidence of Edwin Chadwick and the Rev. E. A. Fuller before the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, (29), paragraphs 13945 and 6806-8. For an account of the quality of some of the houses put up in London in the 1870s, see Jephson, (39), pages 227-232. A description of housing and the bye-laws regulating new building in Manchester in the second half of the century is given in Simon, (55), chapter III.

(10) British real incomes in twenty years' time may well be of the same order as in the United States now where ‘Much of the replacement demand is primarily determined not so much by the existence of unfit housing as by a demand, capable of being met in a wealthy community, for larger, better-equipped and in every sense of the term more up-to-date dwellings’. United Nations, (64), part I, page 47.

(11) Minister of Housing, House of Commons Weekly Hansard, 6 November 1961, col. 650.

Note (1) page 25 See the evidence of D. Dolton before the Departmental Committee on Building Bye-laws, (43), para. 14.

(2) Ministry of Housing and Local Government, (33), page 2.

(3) A rate of demolition and replacement of 200 thousand a year, together with additions to stock of about 120-130 thousand (page 24) makes a total requirement of some 320-330 thousand; the recent annual output has been 270 thousand.

(4) On the assumptions given, the median age of a house in England and Wales in 1980 would be about 28 years, compared with 35 years in 1961 and almost 40 years in 1945. In Sweden in 1945 the median age was about 23 years, (60), table 246, page 217. In the United States the median age of non-farm dwelling units was about 24 years in 1940 and 28 years in 1950 : figures based on Grebler, Blank and Winnick, (28), page 272. The figures for urban and rural non-farm dwellings have been averaged. In Denmark, in 1950 about a quarter of all urban dwellings had been built before 1900 compared with about three-eighths in England and Wales in 1961, Danish Ministries of Housing, Labour and Social Affairs, (10), page 5. In Germany, in 1960, the median age of dwellings was probably between 30 and 35 years, (24), chapter XII, table 7, page 273. But in France in 1954 the median age of dwellings must have been about 80 years, Febvay, (14), page 163.

(5) For a discussion of the sensitivity of rents to vacancy rates, see Grebler, (27), especially pages 560-2 and Fisher, (16), pages 95-119. See also Cairncross, (3), pages 12-36.

Note (1) page 26 In 1948-49 perhaps just under two-thirds of the people who moved were between 20 and 40 years or less than 5 years, while for the population as a whole rather more than one- third were in these categories. The proportion of movers of 50 years and over was about half the proportion of that age group in the total population. See Newton and Jeffrey, (48), table VI, page 33. These findings were confirmed by a survey done ten years later when older smaller households accounted for 22 per cent of households in the sample of all households but only for 11 per cent of the moving house holds. See Donnison, Cockburn, and Corlet, (12), table 40, page 80.

(2) Of all one-person households in England and Wales in 1951, 41.3 per cent consisted of widowed or divorced females of 40 years and over compared with 11.0 per cent of widowed and divorced men of 40 years and over. General Register Office, (20), table 12A, page 68.

(3) Bathrooms, lobbies, etc. are not counted as rooms in the Census; nor are kitchens unless they are used for eating in. General Register Office, (20), page xvii.

(4) See Appendix, note 4, page 33.

Note (1) page 27 Other authorities have suggested 20 per cent as the maximum: As is commonly accepted, the maximum proportion of income to be paid in rent that is socially desirable is 20 per cent’. United Nations, (63), page 5. Most people pay far less than this. The proportion of total consumers' expenditure on housing (National Income and Expenditure 1961) has been (current prices) under a tenth throughout the post-war period and fairly stable. (This item does not include repayments of mortgage, but includes an imputed rent instead.) It was about one-eighth in the late 1930s, having risen from under a tenth in the early 1920s, when it was kept down by rent control. In 1900-14 it had been about one-eighth.

(2) Consumers' Association, (4), page 79.

(3) In America, the Federal Housing Association has, since before the war, been insuring schemes for lengthening mort gages and reducing down payments. Under the new housing bill, signed by the President in July 1961, down payments of 3 per cent and repayments period of up to 35 years will be insured in some cases. United States Information Service, (68), page 1.

(4) United Nations, (64). Because of the rise in conventionally accepted housing standards, together with the rise in house building costs, ‘a working class dwelling in most countries in Europe now costs more in terms of average wages than at the beginning of the century’, part 1, page 3.

Note (1) page 28 Reiners and Broughton, (50), page 26.

(2) In Great Britain, in 1958, 44 per cent of the net output of general builders was done by firms employing less than 25 persons. Board of Trade, (61), tables 2 (i) (A) and 2 (ii) (A), pages 128-6 and 128-20.

(3) See Building Research Station, (2), page 55.

Note (1) page 29 See Stone, (56), and Ministry of Housing and Local Government, (32).

Note (1) page 30 Stone, (56), table A7, page 457. For an earlier discussion of this topic see Ministry of Housing and Local Government, (31), chapter VI.

(2) Strachan, (59), pages 1193-95, Glass, (25), pages 358-60, and for a more general discussion, Edwards, (13).

(3) For difficulties of this kind in London, see Munby, (46), page 81, and in Sweden, Denby, (9), page 65.

(4) See Cullingworth, (7), pages 159-162, and references to social surveys mentioned there.

(5) Ministry of Housing and Local Government, (34), 1955, page 32, and 1960, page 11.

(6) ‘Birmingham has had negotiations with ninety-six authorities all over the country … Twenty-five agreements have been signed but by the end of June 1959 only 745 houses had been built and occupied’. Cullingworth, (8,) pages 152 and 153. The consequence is that Birmingham has to use intensively every bit of land it can within its own boundaries and this means building high flats. ‘85 per cent of the new dwellings being built by the City of Birming ham are flats. In financial terms that means that the average one or two-bedroomed flat costs about £2,700 to £2,800 all in’. Julius Silverman, M.P., House of Commons Weekly Hansard, no. 517, col. 1004, 27 March 1961. At the end of August 1961, the Government announced that it was going to help in solving Birmingham's overspill problem by the expansion of Daventry, Redditch and Worcester and by building a new town, possibly at Dawley in Shropshire. For further discussion of overspill problems, see Culling worth, (8).

(7) The amount of these subsidies can be considerable. Of the council dwellings in Holborn at March 1960, 87 per cent were one and two-bedroom flats. A large proportion of these must have been in high blocks, for the average Exchequer subsidy was almost £80 for each dwelling in the Housing Revenue Account. The Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants, (38), pages 20-23. See also Osborn, (49).

(8) See Appendix, note 6, page 35.

(9) See Appendix, note 7, table 11, page 36.

Note (1) page 31 United Nations, (64), page 5.

(2) United States data are from Department of Commerce, (67), 1960, table 1040, page 763. The floor area figures are reduced by one-eleventh to adjust for the American practice of measuring floor area from outside dimensions, Stone, (57), page 106. The data for England and Wales are based on the number of bedrooms built by local authorities in 1956. The areas assumed for each type of dwelling were : one bedroom, 450 sq. ft., two bedrooms, 750 s.q ft., three bedrooms, 915 sq. ft., and 4 or more bedrooms, 1200 sq. ft.

Note (1) page 32 Appendix, note 6, page 35.