ABSTRACT
Discussion of housing policy tends to concentrate far too much on questions of quantity as though the solutions to housing need are to be found simply in building more and more houses. This is despite the lessons of the mass housing programmes of the 1960s and 1970s which led to many housing disasters and the demolition of new housing within ten years of it being built. This failure to consider the quality and character of dwellings has been an expensive mistake and yet the quality and design of housing and its suitability for current life-styles are still neglected topics. As a result, we continue to build houses which are unsuitable for the ways in which many people want to live. This will continue to aggravate problems of homelessness as the right kind of housing in the right places will not be available.
