Improvements in Housing

Aims:

• Identify why improvements in housing took place.

• Explain how the building of council houses tackled the housing problem.

Improvements in Housing

• By the late 1800s many local council (authorities) had provided adequate sewage, piped water supplies and paved streets.

• Local councils had the power to buy and demolish slums and build council housing for rent – this is known as ‘Slum Clearance.’

• Council housing is housing owned by the council and rented out to people at a reasonable rent.

• However local councils found it difficult to pay for the cost of new housing.

Royal Commission

• A group of people appointed by the government to investigate and a report on a particular issue.

• Investigated housing across Scotland 1912-1917.• Produced an official report in 1918 highlighting

the problems in housing.

‘Many houses had insufficient supplies of water, no proper drains, refuse and waste lying about the streets….. Unspeakably filthy privy-middens. Merely to relieve existing overcrowding and replace houses that should be demolished, 121,000 new houses are required’

Extract from the Royal Commission on Housing

Tackling the Problem• After World War One (1914-

1918), Prime Minister Lloyd George promised to provide ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’.

• The 1919 ‘Addison’ Act resulted in slums being demolished and the building of council houses. However the money to build new houses soon ran out

• The Wheatley Act 1924 gave councils more money to build houses – 75,000 were built in Scotland BUT many more were needed.

Tasks:

• Study the photographs of new council housing that was built in the 1920s/1930s.

• What evidence is there from the photographs that housing in Scotland had improved?

http://www.scran.ac.uk/database/image.php?usi=000-000-003-429-R&cusi=000-000-003-429-C&searchdb=scran

Council Housing Estates

• Low rents• Adequate living space• Gas, electricity, running water• Toilets• Gardens• Same design• No public amenities nearby e.g. shops,

parks.• Not necessarily rehoused in the same estate

as your old neighbours from the tenements.

Tasks:

• Copy the table on page 56 which shows the Improvements in Housing

• Now complete Task 29 on page 23 of the workguide.