ABSTRACT
Although housing associations owned only 1.2 million dwellings in 1998 (accounting for a mere 5 per cent of the total stock of housing), they have become increasingly important in recent years, partly owing to a shift of emphasis from rehabilitation to their traditional role of building houses, partly as a result of their new role as principal providers of new social housing, but mainly because of LSVTs of housing from local authority ownership. Within this context, this chapter:
• examines the growth of housing associations from their beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the 1990s;
• reviews public policy towards housing associations from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s;
• explores the role of the Housing Corporation and housing associations in the 1980s; • considers changes in investment and rent policies in the 1990s; • identifies the ways in which housing associations can intervene in the private rented
sector and facilitate shared ownership schemes; • discusses the political consensus vis-à-vis housing associations; • analyses the recommendations of the Housing Green Paper; and • concludes by examining the provisions of the Spending Review (2000).
