ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the way the institutional framework for the provision of housing has developed over the past 100 years. The history of housing policy is traced in brief, from the early days of state intervention, through the period of the world wars and the welfare state, up to the start of the New Labour period. There then follows a discussion of the solutions devised over time to the problems posed by people considered to be marginal or to have ‘special needs’, such as older people, the mentally ill and homeless people, in relation to whom social policy concerns interface with those relating to the built environment. The chapter then moves on to a consideration of housing issues under New Labour, and how these have become constructed as part of a wider and more inclusive policy discourse. The fi nal section of the chapter examines the scope and operations of the speculative housebuilding industry.
