ABSTRACT

The twentieth century has seen an immense growth in this type of development in Britain. Home ownership, restricted to the very rich until the early years of the century, had become by the 1990s the tenure form of about 70 per cent of the population. The financial, legal and other issues surrounding owner occupancy are so embedded in the political, social and economic life of this country that it is difficult to deal with the provision processes without taking some account of the historical and ideological context in which this growth in ownership has occurred. The literature concerned with owner occupancy is enormous and cross-disciplinary and cannot even be summarised here. It includes technical discussions of construction techniques, historical accounts of the growth of the lending institutions, financial analyses of the effect of changes in housepurchase credit on the broader economy, discussions concerning the effects of ownership on political beliefs and voting patterns, and even disputes about whether or not there is an innate desire to own property in order to meet some psychological desire for personal security.