Policy Analysis: the Privatisation of Council Housing [2]
论文作者:www.51lunwen.org论文属性:作业 Assignment登出时间:2014-06-09编辑:lzm点击率:12021
论文字数:2065论文编号:org201406091542232622语种:英语 English地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:Policy AnalysisPrivatisation of Council Housing政策分析住房的私有化council housing
摘要:The cumulative effect of twenty years of council housing policy in factresulted in a greater divide in the richpoor axis in Britain; hence theestablishment of independent bodies such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation,dedicated to social policy research and urban redevelopment via public funding.
was designed to keep the Tories inpower more than it was concerned with the plight of the poorest members ofBritish society.
More significantly, the state's adoptionof the policy of laissezfaire for the council housing issue telegraphed ageneral deregulation of housing services at the precise time when greater stateintervention was required. In this conceptual context, little has changed underNew Labour. The 1990's in fact saw an increase in the state's drift away fromregulation of council housing, assisting, in the process, the rise to power ofthe worst excesses of the industry. The legacy is that unscrupulous groups oflandlords now control the lowest end of the rented housing spectrum, hiking upprices and buying up many of the remaining council properties to ensure a kindof economic hegemony over former public owned properties. Furthermore, thediscernible lack of new buildings in the most deprived areas of the country hasadded an extra urgency to the problem, itself a direct legacy of the lack ofmoney put back into the council housing system under Thatcher. One can begin tosee the essentially constrictive effect of the initial policy of privatisationwhereby the shortcomings could be covered up in the short term but,simultaneously, the long term issues bequeathed by its advent would prove evenmore difficult to solve.
With the wide ranging problems ofthe privatisation of council housing policy exposed attention must be turned tothe measures taken by the government to counteract the increasing marginalisationof the weaker and poorer members of society. First, it should be rememberedthat although New Labour has indeed continued the path set out by Thatcher'sinitial privatisation policy, it has likewise overseen the greatest series ofsocial reforms since the end of the Second World War. Blair's first term kickstartedthe broader policy of 'social inclusion' that particularly targeted employmentby tackling training and the stigma surrounding being out of employment. Theissue of social exclusion, unemployment and housing was therefore central toGordon Brown's aim to get Britain back to work. Yet by trying to tackle so manydeepseated issues at once, New Labour had to sacrifice one area of its reformagenda for the sake of the others. In this way Blair failed in his bid to easethe burden of shelter for the poorest elements of society. By making morepeople eligible for Housing Benefit, New Labour has only succeeded in furtherconstricting the already taut state of the poorer end of the housing spectrumin the UK, as Hewitt concludes.
The stress on rewarding work in thegovernment's policy and rhetoric is in danger of overshadowing the needs of themost vulnerable who cannot work.
In addition, according to theRowntree foundation (Social Policy Research: June 1996), Labour's overrelianceon means tested methods of ascertaining housing benefit has resulted in asizeable increase in the number of claimants, putting added pressure on thelocal authorities that must deal with the discrepancy between supply anddemand. The government has since aimed to tackle the problem by shifting theonus onto local authorities who have been very quick to take up the option totransfer large numbers of homes to private associations. Matt Weaver (2000:3)projects that, because of this, there will not simply be a lack of councilhousing in the future, there will in fact be a vacuum where once there used toexist state funded accommodation.
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