TECHNOBUREAUCRACY AND CITY LIFE at least a two year delay which has tended to occur hitherto while legislation was passed» (62). The most surprising feature of the Green Paper is the blatant way in which a Labour Government is assisting in the strengthening of the many institutions that control access to privately owned housing. The building societies and others must have regarded the local authorities as at least a minor threat to their power over «access» and the existence of publicly owned housing was, in any case, anathema to their ideology. The well ordered technobureaucratic solution envisaged by Crosland has been cast aside and the way has been paved for the gradual eclipse of the public housing sector by the end of the century. The predominant form of housing tenure will be owner occupation with various degrees of variation around this basic concept. A few years ago the Tories presented the development of the role of Housing Associations as a preferable alternative to council housing. Housing associations have been in existence for at least 150 years and their activities range from self-build schemes and equity sharing to rehabilitation of old housing. The amount of centralised control being exercised by the government prevents the associations from developing into useful vehicles for obtaining self-managed and self-built housing. They seem to be rather the prototype for a future technobureaucratic housing allocation system. « All the grants and subisidies come from the Department of the Environment via the Housing Corporation. The corporation was set up in 1964, and was given very extensive powers of control over housing associations (taken out of local authority hands) after the 1974 Housing Act. Controlled by government appointees, it is an enormous national housing authority with an initial 1974-75 budget of £ 750 million, equivalent to 30,000 new and improved units. Housing Associations grants are planned to increase as those for council housing fall. The Corporation is answerable only to the Secretary of State, and certainly not to either housing associations or their tenants. The Co-operative Housing Agency, a subsidiary of the Corporation, is to be the promotional and financing agency for tenants co-operatives» (63). (62) HARLOE M.: op. cit., p. 146. (63) PHILLIPS M.: Housing Associations, Architectorial Design, August 1976, p. 483. 43
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