The Impact of Housing on Social Need and Society in Britain

The impact of housing on social need and society

Social policies are the ways and means in which every individual has the right to be given an equal start in life and throughout society as a whole. Policies are put in place to help deal with problems such as poverty within society, one of which is squalor which was identified by Beveridge (1942) The report highlighted how society needed to change and how political ideology was shifting focus around welfare therefore the need for a better quality of housing as at this time there were families living in conditions that were seen to be far below a satisfactory standard.
Housing was bought to the forefront of the government’s policies after world war two due to the bombings that caused huge damage to buildings across major cities across the country, leaving thousands of family’s without homes including those men who had been away fighting in the war, because of this the idea of the homes for heroes was created, this was the beginning of council housing in which every soldier returning from the war was given a home. The town planning Act 1947 required all local authorities to build new housing and schools which would benefit the population, a massive slum clearance programme was put in place during the 1950’s to the 1960’s to create space for new housing projects. The labour government argued that in the mid 1960’s the renewal of houses had been achieved following the war and the slum Clarence, therefore money should now be spent on those homes that were in need of repair and renovation.
Thatcher’s Government bought about the selling off of council housing to tenants to encourage family’s to own their own property and in return reduce the need for social housin...

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...ety today.
The government will always have a fight on their hands in the way of combatting homelessness and overcrowding, there is little doubt the housing situation has come a long way since the end of the second world war and that the governments have placed housing at the heart of most of their policies, standards have been raised thanks to the slum clearances in the 30s and Thatcher’s individualistic approach to the right to buy scheme did help those to gain a foot on the property ladder although at the same time reduced social housing which later proved to cost a vast amount of money to rebuild to once again be able to provide for both the homeless and low income families. The problem with social housing today is that there are many families living within over crowed properties while other families are living with unused rooms due to their families growing g