ABSTRACT
Typically, governments have been optimistic and have regarded shortages as being of a temporary nature. This was particularly so in the period immediately after the First World War when the foundations of housing policy (and of some of our current housing problems) were laid. Rent control was forced upon a reluctant government in 1915 by the political necessity of preventing landlords from benefiting from the effects of wartime shortages. At the time it was thought to be justified mainly on the ground that the ‘normal peacetime remedy’ for high rents – the building of more houses – was not possible. Furnished dwellings were subject to different controls, with a separate appellate machinery (rent tribunals) charged with fixed ‘reasonable rents’ but empowered to give security of tenure for a limited period only. The ‘most difficult’ question facing the Francis Committee was whether the system of control over furnished accommodation should be assimilated with the system relating to unfurnished lettings.
