ABSTRACT
Emanating from a recommendation in the Housing Green Paper, around 3 million council tenants were beginning to face rent increases of up to 16 per cent above the rate of inflation because the department of transport, local government and the regions was insisting that from April 2002 rents were to be more closely aligned with private property values. Clearly the government was consolidating the role of housing associations as the principal providers of social housing. In London, owner-occupation became unaffordable for many households where the price of even the cheapest one-bedroom flat had risen to about £80,000 by 2001, while as many as 210,000 families were on waiting lists in the capital with little chance of securing accommodation in the foreseeable future. With fewer and fewer houses being built in the social sector, and the problem of affordability being largely unresolved in the home-ownership market, homelessness remained a major issue, despite a recorded reduction in the number of rough sleepers.
