Thatcher Neo-Liberalism Should Be Blamed For the Housing Problem in Great Britain - Research Paper Example

The majority of the changes in the organisation and provision of social housing since 1980 were due to the social and economic policies of the Conservative governments between May 1979 and April 1997, as well as how the New Labour governments have reacted to those changes after 1997.  Under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative governments took steps to radically change the organisation and provision of social housing mainly through the extension of the right of council tenants to buy their own homes via the Housing Act of 1980.

The following will evaluate the consequences of the Conservative governments’ changes in the organisation and provision of social housing in respect of one specific local authority area, that of Tower Hamlets council in London, rather than across the whole of Britain. This is due to Tower Hamlets being an area that apparently suffered more of the known disadvantages and less of the assumed advantages that those changes in the organisation and provision of social housing brought to the rest of the country.

The case study will evaluate whether the right to buy scheme expanded by the Housing Act of 1980 is the major cause of homelessness and other problems such as a scarcity of social housing. The evaluation will discuss whether other factors have had an influence over these problems as they have occurred in Tower Hamlets since 1980.The aim of this study is to find out whether the Housing Act of 1980 and subsequent Housing Acts have contributed a) directly and b) in a profound way to the problems of homelessness and social polarisation that remain prevalent to this day.

While this is a difficult problem to study, because it is extremely difficult to extract certain components of political policy and determine their uses, especially when it is part of a more generalised regime change, it is to be hoped that statistical information and journal articles will contribute to finding a cohesive, coherent conclusion.Statistically, homelessness has always been a difficult factor to measure.