ABSTRACT
The supply of private rented accommodation in Great Britain declined from approximately 90 per cent of dwellings in 1914 to only 11 per cent in 1999, compared to around 23 per cent in France, 29 per cent in the United States and 40 per cent in Germany; and, in Great Britain, housebuilding in this sector has been virtually nonexistent since the Second World War, unlike most other European countries and North America. Private rented housing in Great Britain includes a high proportion of the oldest and poorest dwellings. Most were built before 1919, and according to the DoE (1985a) there were as many as 334,000 houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) in England and Wales-60 per cent in serious disrepair, 80 per cent below standard vis-à-vis amenities, overcrowding and management, and 81 per cent lacking satisfactory means of escape from fire. The English House Condition Survey 1991 (DoE, 1993), moreover, indicated that whereas only respectively 5.5, 6.5 and 6.8 per cent of owner-occupied, housing association and local authority dwellings were unfit, as many as 19.9 per cent of the private rented stock were of this condition.
