ABSTRACT
Progressive public housing authorities therefore introduced schemes of rent mortgage, community leasehold or equity sharing on an experimental basis. The GLC and Birmingham, together with others encouraged by the Housing Corporation, allowed tenants to use any of these schemes of paying a mixture of rent and mortgage. After a period of time accumulated rent could be regarded as the mortgage downpayment, and the tenant thus became a potential owner-occupier. The great advantage of such schemes was that they encouraged the more ambitious, socially active tenant to remain in public housing estates, and thus maintained a more lively, varied community. Tenants became house owners without changing their address. That was a tremendous step forward. For nothing had been more threatening to social mix than that social mobility which took tenants out of urban schools and inner city public housing.32
