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CONCRETE
TO CONTAINERS THE CHANGING FACE OF UK HOUSING
H
ousing of the UK has experienced a lot of change in the past half century, from the way it is constructed to the philosophy of housing. People have been trying to find ‘solutions’ to housing for years, from the cramped tenements of Victorian times, to the general lack of affordable housing today. It sometimes pays to look to the past and see what history has to teach us about what it means to have a home. The 1950’s and 60’s saw housebuilding on a massive scale, filling holes in housing stock left by bombing during WW2, and to replace sub-standard and run-down housing. The economy was recovering, and local authority homes were being built at the rate of 250,000 a year, peaking at 400,000 in the 1960’s. The 60’s and 70’s were the time of brutalist architecture, and concrete edifices were a common marker of a government building or tower block. The philosophy behind this was a good one, a socialist ideal where people had their own communities in the sky, complete with hairdressers, shops and all the entertainment they needed. Built in the new style with these socially progressive intentions and with new materials, these new homes were also conveniently made of inexpensive materials and could be completed quickly. It didn’t go quite so badly as J G Ballard predicted, but lack of government investment, high areas of renters and social housing combined with the tendency to clump ‘problem’ tenants together, meant that broken lifts, vandalism and violence were soon commonplace. Many of these blocks have since been demolished – although many have remained and some, like the Brunswick Centre, have even gained listed status. Moving into the 80’s, the mass sell-off of council homes under right to buy depleted the council housing stock and it has never recovered. This has
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meant that many people on lower salaries and those unable to purchase a home were increasingly renting in the private and social housing sector, a trend continuing today. The 90’s were mainly a period of recovery from the bust following the years of growth in the 80’s, leading to the heady heights of the boom years of the 2000’s where average house prices more than doubled from £100,000 in 2000 to around £225,000 in 2007 before the 2008 crash bought the dream to an end. So where does this leave us now? The number of people who live in owner-occupied homes has decreased after (mostly) steadily increasing since
the construction of 300,000 new homes each year. There were 184,000 homes build in 2016/17, and this is increasing which is heartening, however the government’s idea of affordable frequently doesn’t follow what the majority of the population would consider affordable. So what is a younger person to do, especially in high-cost areas such as London and the South East, or those on lower wages or wanting to live mortgage free? Are there any realistic options for those who have been priced out of the housing market, and what can we do to combat the high cost of living? For a start, people are getting more creative and willing to compromise. The first sacrifice on the altar of cost will usually be space. ‘Tiny houses’ are often touted as the solution to housing ills, but with a square meterage far below the Riba recommended size is this a sacrifice too far? Back in ’79, The Jam knew that ‘the public wants what the public gets’ and with the rise of smaller housing there has been a whole movement to accompany it as something to strive for. People now want to move
Tiny houses are often touted as the solutions to housing ills’ the 1950’s; according to research by Bloomberg Economics, home ownership fell from 73.3% in 2007, to 63.4% in 2016. This is a startling fall that masks other trends – notably the decline in home ownership for young people. The IFS has found that for those born in the 1970’s, 43% owned their own home before they hit 27. This figure dropped to just 25% for those born in the late 1980s. This trend is also more pronounced for those in more expensive areas. Home ownership for 25 – 34-year olds in London and the South East has dropped from 64% in 1998, to 32% in 2018. So, the nearly 10% drop in home ownership since 2007 disguises some even more startling information when broken down by age or region. In 2017, Theresa May promised to make “the British dream a reality by reigniting home ownership in Britain once again”, and said she was taking “personal charge” of the effort to solve the country’s housing problems. The then chancellor, Phillip Hammond, promised to ensure
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towards minimalism as promoted by Marie Kondo, tidy-mind, de-cluttering and countless other ‘wellbeing’ trends. Clever solutions such as ‘cute’ storage (think IKEA) and a high use of the space available with multi-use furniture (Aleph and others) means that it has never been cooler to live smaller. Modular homes are another way to go. Originating from the post-war quick built homes, these new modular homes are built to a much higher standard. Not just in cost, but attractiveness and quality; the ilke Homes development, Hundred House, won
