ABSTRACT
The difficulties caused by the rapid pace of postwar social and economic change in the countryside, especially for the long-standing rural dweller as opposed to the more recent in-migrant from an urban background, have frequently been the subject of a rather ill-defined concern. Competition for rural housing is inevitably at its height in those areas of the accessible countryside which have proved particularly attractive to an increasingly mobile middle class, seduced by the apparent advantages of rural living. Such groups have had the financial ability to establish themselves within rural communities, but such has been their domination of local housing markets that they have created disadvantage for the local population. The degree and variety of housing problems in the countryside is therefore considerable, and their solution requires positive and flexible policies tailored to suit the wide range of circumstances of different rural areas.
