This chapter focuses on individuals, households, and larger groups, to review the character and impact of difference in housing. We consider how people relate to the home as well as their housing strategies. Background is provided by a summary of some socioeconomic and demographic trends, and we also keep in mind the constraints bearing upon households. Consequently we take up again the agency/structure relationships introduced in Chapter One. Nonetheless, it is agency which now mainly preoccupies us, since fuller discussion of structural factors and regulation comes in later chapters.

Dwellings, households, and socioeconomic change

The overall quality of housing has risen greatly since the Second World War, and provision of internal amenities (baths, toilets, central heating, and so on) has much improved. Lee points out that the number of households exposed to poor housing conditions “showed a major decline in Britain” by the mid-1970s, and problems faced by those people with least choice and bargaining power in the housing market are “very different today” from what they were in the past (Lee, 1998, pp 59-65). Of course, many limitations persist in the housing stock, including shortages of suitable dwellings for disabled people, or continuing deficiencies in internal amenities within private rented housing (see Lee, pp 60-5). Indeed, despite images of steadily improving conditions, the increased impact of homelessness has suggested a housing system with acute pressures and shortfalls. In any case, disadvantage in housing has several dimensions (cf Goodlad, 1993, p 128), revolving not only around a shortfall in physical standards, but also around exclusion from expectations of secure possession and comfortable environments widely enjoyed by others. Variations in housing experiences and the need for housing assistance continue to be related to income and wealth. As McCrone and Stephens observe, the “better pensions and unemployment relief are, the less need there is for housing subsidies” (McCrone and Stephens, 1995, p 3).

While general housing quality standards and economic disadvantage remain important, the housing agenda has been increasingly complicated by household and allied changes that seem to have undermined some of the policy assumptions of earlier post-war years. It seems that we now live within much more diverse households, with greater variety of outlooks and needs.