ABSTRACT
This chapter argues the way in which need became essential to social housing, and also how it came to operate as a regime of truth around which various technologies and experts coalesced. Need acted as a key rationing device, but the parameters of ‘legitimate’ need, and hence the scope of the social, were open to renegotiation as the state’s vision of social housing shifted. The idea of need first appeared in official discourse on housing in the early 1930s during the depression. The idea of heroism implied a process of categorization, division and exclusion. The guidance was silent on the need of those selected for this accommodation, because need was not the main consideration. The Committee on Local Expenditure (1932), set up in the wake of recession, gave just two paragraphs to ‘management and allocation of accommodation’ and echoed the Ministry’s view on targeted assistance: ‘subsidies should not be wasted by being given to those who do not need them’.
