TECHNOBUREAUCRACY AND CITY LIFE Dwellings Acquisitions Act of 1899 first empowered the local authorities to provide funds for house purchase. The intention of local authority intervention in the housing finance market is not, however, to provide an alternative to the «private» housing finance market but merely to supplement the activities of the main mortgage institutions. Local authorities provide mortgages for people who would normally experience difficulty in obtaining one from a building society. Thus the local authorities' « preferred borrowers» are supposed to include persons high on the local authority housing « waiting list», homeless persons, persons wishing to buy older and smaller property (usually considered unsatisfactory by the building societies), and sitting tenants. In practice most local authorities emulate the lending policies of the building societies insofar as deciding on people who consti tute a « reasonable risk». Therefore, only lower income white-collar workers or skilled blue-collar workers wishing to buy the older and smaller type of property would be likely to «benefit» from a local authority mortgage. Up until very recently (1975) local authority mortgage schemes were becoming important sources of housing finance.: Restrictions in Government spending have forced many authorities to seriously cut back on their lending schemes. Attempts were made to encourage building societies to « fill the gap » now left open by these cutback but these attempts have so far met Table 8: Number of Advances by Building Societies and Local Authorities 1975 Properties by age and price Building Societies Local Authorities Pre-1919 Under £4,000 5 15 £4,000-5,999 23 16 £6,000 or over . 98 32 Total 126 63 Inter-war 126 20 Post-war, second hand 278 12 New. 121 6 Total 651 102 (49) (49) HMSO op. cit., part. II, p. 90. 31
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