NINO STAFFA in any case accustomed everyone to allocation procedures - «rationing» - as a more desirable alternative than the market. The 1950's saw the return of a Conservative government which tried to boost the private building industry and thus aimed for a target of 300,000 new houses a year. In practice, however, most of these 300,000 houses were built for local authorities. For reason of public expenditure cuts and the belief that the early fifties' building boom had dealt with the worst of the shortage, there was a reduction in the rate of increase of local authority housing in the late fifties. In the early 1960's it became painfully apparent that there was still a serious housing shortage: and that the likelihood of this shortage being alleviated by private builders was exceedingly slim. In 1965 a target of 500,000 houses a year was announced, about half of which were built by local authorities. « The emphasis was ... on quantity, with the Housing Cost Yardstick used after 1967 not just to discourage but to prohibit expensive building. Quantity was not, however, being sought at the expense of quality - the main Parker Morris standards were made mandatory in 1967. At the time the expectation was that the use of industrialised building methods would allow large numbers of houses to be built to the new standards relatively cheaply» (53). This period saw the appearance in cities like London of vast concrete jungles containing high density tower and slab blocks. Pressures during the late 60's and the early 70's to cut public expenditure has brought about a great reduction in the rate of building which has been worsened by the effects of inflation on the price of materials and labour. The following table illustrates the trends in house building for local authorities since the Secon World War. Table 5 showed that over 80% of Council tenants are either in the skilled, semi-skilled of unskilled socio-economic groupings whereas over 80% of owner-occupiers were either professionals-employers-managers, intermediate and junior non-manual. It would seem, therefore, that local authority housing tends to provide accomodation for that section of the population which cannot be catered for by the private market. This is, however, only partially true since those with the greatest housing need are either not catered for by local (53) HMSO op. cit., part. III, p. 5. 36
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