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245
manoeuvre are becomine progressively more restricted by the fact
that council housing has become a refuge for the "respectable"
tenant, many of whom will not be persuaded to obtain a home
of their own although financially capable of so doing.
Housing and homelessness, ever subjects of particular political
sensitivity, are being unnecessarily aggravated and adversely
affected by aspects which seem to attract little attention. In addition
to the tendency for many modern teenagers to forsake a
satisfactory home situation to set up a separate establishment, there
is the appropriation of accommodation by education authorities for
the housing of students who are also likely to have left similar
satisfactory conditions. (There are nearly half a million students
in full-time higher education almost one half of whom go into
the private rental section.) Both subtract from the total amount
of accommodation available for general housing needs and, what
is more reprehensible, both have the effect of pricing what
accommodation is left, out of reach of our less fortunate citizens,
a fact which bears especially harshly on the old and the partnerless.
As a group, architects and town and country planners are
hardly the most esteemed of public servants. They are viewed
by the community either in the light of interventionists who
prevent an individual improving his property by adding another
room or a garage to his home or, conversely, the originators of
the new high rise monstrosity or 6-lane motorway at the bottom
of his garden where once were pleasant villas and quiet roads.
Furthermore, they always seem to know what is the best kind of
home for the council tenant to live in (often living elsewhere themselves)
yet most of their recent bewildering series of developments
seem to lack artistic appeal, graciousness and tenant satisfaction.
Scant attention is paid to families with young children whose
crying needs for a back garden and a small shop "over the way"
for convenient shopping are largely ignored as being uneconomical
although probably psychologically sound and essentially viable.
However, with the present emphasis on corporate planning, these
very officers could, almost imperceptibly, be made responsible for
an increasing proportion of the Council's activities and, ipso facto,
the wizards to produce the panacea for all local social ills.
Planners have the ability radically to alter the lives of individuals
and communities alike but we must not permit their undoubted
competence and dedication to obscure the fact that they are
fallible and their field restricted. In their own interests they should
not be made to shoulder responsibilities which rightly belong to
other professions.