ABSTRACT

In Outcast London, Gareth Stedman Jones (1984) documents how the ‘housing problem’, the shortage of decent housing at an affordable cost for the working class and especially the ‘casual poor’, was a key strand in social and political discourse in late nineteenth-century London. As this chapter demonstrates, London still has a pronounced housing problem despite its twenty-fi rst-century global city status. ‘Affordable housing’ was Londoners’ top priority in terms of improving the capital as a place to live (Mayor of London, 2005a: 7). ‘Affordable housing’ is usually taken to mean housing below full market price or rent.1 As such it covers both ‘social housing’ (local authority and housing association rental property), the subject of this chapter, and ‘intermediate housing’. The latter was defi ned by the Mayor of London (2006b: 28) as encompassing ‘a range of housing options that help fi ll the gap between social renting and full home ownership or market renting’, for example shared ownership.