ABSTRACT
This chapter provides background information about factors affecting the political and operational feasibility of housing programmes. Housing policy has been a frequent source of party conflict but the initial point that needs to be stressed is that both parties have adopted a social welfare approach. Unlike the Swedish Social Democrats, the Labour Party in Britain has not sought to promote a single ideal of multi-family co-operative living. In the UK, as elsewhere, rising incomes in the post-war period, coupled with favourable tax regulations, have drawn more and more families into owner occupation. Before the building boom of the 1930s only a quite small proportion of families were owner-occupiers. Relations between the central and local bureaucracies also affect British housing policy, particularly at the implementation stage. The operational feasibility of programmes and the success with which their objectives can be implemented depend on providing suppliers of land, capital and labour with adequate incentives.
