TECHNOBUREAUCRACY AND CITY LIFE two main choices in a housing stock which had grown by some 40% in two decades» (60). However, there were substantial unresolved problems in many areas despite the fact that the majority of people in the 70's were better housed than ever before. It was clear that closer attention should now be paid to achieving a more effective approach. When the Labour Party regained power in 1974, Anthony Crosland was made the Secretary of State for the Environment and he set up a « Housing Finance Review » which was intended to study and then recommend remedies for the effects of the jungle of uncoordinated legislation which had been generated by successive governments. Crosland had noted that the housing finance system was inequitable and highly regressive (i.e. the largest amout of subsidy went to those who needed them least). « Crosland outlined the priorities for the Review in a speech to the Housing Centre Trust in 1975. He pointed out that no government had a consistent housing policy: that serious residual housing problems remained especially for the poorest; that there was a system of subsidies which distributed aid in a manner which was « whimsical in the extreme»; that there were damaging lurches in housing investment; and that ad hoe policies only seemed to succeed in solving one problem by creating another. His review was intended to analyse how, the present system operated and answer three main questions. Firts, how much housing was needed and how could available resources be best used to get it? Secondly, how much would individuals pay for their housing? Thirdly, what were the wider social implic;ations of the way housing was organised? He was particularly concerned about the growing social polarisation between council tenants and owner occupiers - as owner occupation continued to grow would public housing be only for a stigmatised minority, burdened with increasing social and management problems?» (60. The political implications of the issties Crosland was raising were potentially explosive and it must have worried the many and varied institutions, organisation, individuals etc .... who are predominant in the« housing lobby», whose main aim is the expansion of owner occupation and the elimination of (60) and (61) HARLOE M.: op. cit., p. 143. 41
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