ABSTRACT
The transformation of housing associations1 in England since 1974 is little short of spectacular and demands explanation, especially in the context of a housing system that had seemed to be most unlikely to change in this way. As Figure 6.1 (p. 104) illustrates, the rate of change in the other parts of the United Kingdom has been less dramatic; different traditions and circumstances require separate explanations. Not only were housing associations numerically insignifi cant throughout the UK in the early 1970s but there was no sign that their prospects were about to improve. They were completely overshadowed by the local authorities, which owned nearly six million dwellings and appeared to occupy an impregnable position as the dominant suppliers of affordable rented housing. Moreover, the Housing Finance Act, 1972, had introduced a subsidy system for housing associations that was widely regarded within the sector as completely unworkable, and in 1973 the Housing Corporation’s new chairman had found an organisation ‘conscious of its own futility’, beset by a mood of ‘deep, bleak gloom’ (Housing Corporation, 1977: 1). The Corporation had been set up in 1964 specifi cally to support experiments in cost-renting, which had been wound up in 1972, and co-ownership, which saw very little new investment after 1973. At that time the Corporation had no remit in relation to the housing-association sector as a whole and therefore had an uncertain future.
