TECHNOBUREAUCRACY AND CITY LIFE of societies' managers must however have a great moderati_ng effect on the adventurous spirit of estate agents eager to alter the social geography of cities like London. Whilst the many roles of estate agents as « advisers to landlords, building societies and property companies, as· well as sometimes having personal control of all the different organisations » (52) place estate agents in an important position with regard to the generation and manipulation of change they are still the intermediaries of a wider institutional framework for housing allocation (perhaps a corporate society) whose principal trend setter is, at pr_e_sent,the building societies movement. LOCAL AUTHORITY HOUSING The size and importance of local authority housing both in terms of the actual number of units and the amount of resources directed towards it has grown tremendously during this century. The «public» sector of housing (which has now become the second most important form of tenure) grew and developed as a response to drastic housing shortages in the inter war period immediately after the First World War. It was the Housing and Town Planning etc., Act of 1919 which made it a duty for local authorities to review the supply of housing for « the working classes» and where the supply was not sufficient to actually provide the necessary houses. Throughout the inter-war period there followed further legislation regarding publicly built housing. The Housing Act of 1930, for instance, brought about slum clearance programmes and the replacement of the demolished houses by new building in order to rehouse those displaced . After the Second World War there was another severe housing shortage but on this occasion there was also a great scarcity of labour and materials. By the use of «licencing» most new house building was put into the hands of local authorities. The government of the day (a Labour government with a very strong majority in the House) considered that the most effective way of helping those in need would be building to let by local authorities. At the end of the war there were large numbers of men who having married during the war now found themselves with nowhere to go. The« war economy» had I (52) WILLIAMS P.: op. cit., p. 61. 35
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