Thesis Thoughts

Going back to first principle it is fair to say that human beings need shelter to exist.
In society as it exists shelter has emerged to include a place to cook and wash as well as a place to sleep. It also includes spaces for leisure and relaxation, depending on lifestyles and circumstances.
The home is a focus in many people’s lives, a place where they spend a majority of their time.
What is shelter? This is very hard to quantify, and when the other elements are considered, is highly variable. Leisure to one person might be watching television, to another, an indoor bowling alley. To some people, the bowling alley might be preferred but the television is what they have.

In a modern world where specialism still structures society people don’t build their own homes, somebody does if for them, or they buy a home permanently or for a period.
Most people could build a type of shelter but are restricted by legislation and land ownership and stigma.

Society is unequal and many people cannot provide their own home. This raises the question of provision. For whom, where and with what do we as a society provide housing?
This is very emotive and everyone has an opinion, it’s not like a sport where some people are bothered, everyone needs shelter as discussed earlier.

Through the history of Local Authority based provision of housing there have been some successful policies mixed with and without successful delivery. It is a proven field but one which has been very reliant on political agenda’s. It’s too easy to go into the politics.

In the early development of state housing provision the arguments for and against state sponsored provision were more clear cut. To borrow an extract from my history essay:

‘the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, 1885.
Brought to the fore by Lord Salisbury, the then leader of the Conservative Party, as a response to various works enacted by parliament in London such as the Thames Embankment, where these projects would displace already tightly packed slums of the working class. Thus, ‘packing them in tighter,’ elsewhere. The act had very negative reactions in the press, with the Pall Mall Gazette, Manchester Guardian and The Times all likening it to ‘State Socialism’.
Lord Wemyss, leader of the Liberty and Property Defense League party, criticised the bill as ‘class legislation,’ true it probably is, with Salisbury defending this attitude by likening the bill to, ‘the noblest principles of philanthropy and religion.’

‘Class Legislation’, interesting in our modern classless society…

Council and now especially Housing Association stock exists in large numbers throughout the UK, of a varying degree of quality. How is this considered, managed and planned for? Projects such as Pathfinder have lead to the demolition of housing stock, often in the inner city and often not to be replaced. The Right to Buy still exists, council housing is being built in very small numbers in the Local Authority New Build programme.

What is so frightening about an agency of government investing in a public good? Surely it is better than in an Icelandic bank?

My thesis will be layered of policy, possibilities of existing stock, trends, worldwide case studies, political process, scenarios; Perhaps it should be based on scenarios. All intermingled in an unfavorable spaghetti of conjecture.