ABSTRACT
Property and finance are at the heart of the question of slum housing and its politics, but they pose complex questions, not easy to discuss. A series of boxes needs to be opened out, increasing in their implications and generally in the uncertainty of the conclusions that can be reached about their contents. The first box concerns the slum clearance compensation code, its effect on various property interests and on the cost of housing sites. The second concerns the wider array of measures designed to keep houses in proper repair and to enforce standards. The third concerns the property market generally, and particularly its relations with the factors in the two other boxes. The narrower effects on property of slum clearance, for instance, might be judged by relating compensation payments to market values, but was the whole market affected by the compensation code or by wider sanitary provisions? How was the property market at its lower levels affected by such matters as the Rent Acts and suburbanization? The approach adopted is to deal in this chapter with the compensation code and its politics, and to raise some of the general issues relating the themes of the book to the property market. The first section concentrates on a factual presentation, and this is f ollowed by a wider discussion. Some treatment of the question of repairs and improvement and an updating on the 1930s is left to Chapter 9, which is closely linked to the present chapter.
