Introduction

The popularity of estates with current and potential residents is a key dimension of estate problems and successes. Popularity sums up estates successes and failures in other dimensions, and directly affects population mix (see Chapter 3). In turn, population can affect other dimensions, and may feed back to affect popularity.

Popularity or demand can be measured in absolute and in relative terms. Absolute unpopularity – indicated by high rates of refusal of offers of homes, numbers of empty homes, and high turnover – is problematic for residents and managers. However, the most unpopular estate in an area may have few empty homes if there is overwhelming demand in that area. The focus here is on the linked measure of relative popularity, which examines estates’ position relative to other social housing in their local authority, independent of overall local demand. This chapter tracks trends in the 20 estates’ relative popularity over time, to explore how unpopular these ‘unpopular estates’ were, and for which parts of their lifetimes, and to investigate the balance between path dependency and change in terms of popularity (Chapter 3).

The 20 estates as small parts of growing housing stocks

Due to the increasing numbers of local authority homes up to 1981 and homes in all tenures throughout estate lifetimes, each estate was part of a continuously increasing pool of housing. The prevailing situation nationwide and in estates’ local authorities was of generally high demand for council housing throughout estate lifetimes. Nonetheless, each individual estate was in effect experiencing increasingly large and varied competition for residents over time, from other local social housing estates and other housing generally, as well as greater competition for councillors’ and managers’ attention and resources. When E20 (1968/1,000/deck/NW) was ready for letting, another large estate was being completed, and the local authority was only midway through adding 4,000 homes to the 8,000 it already owned (Glendenning and Muthesias 1994). In 1971, the local authority that owned E19 (1936/1,100/fl/NW) had a total of 70,000 homes and provided for 37 per cent of households in the city. It reported, rather plaintively, ‘The sheer scale of the Housing Department's workload, and its involvement with the people of the city … is not always fully understood’ (E19's local authority 1974:1).