The Right to a Decent House by Sidney Jacobs

Author:Sidney Jacobs [Jacobs, Sidney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780710083050
Google: 0iO6AAAAIAAJ
Publisher: Routledge & K. Paul
Published: 1976-01-15T03:55:47+00:00

The Thompsons’ future could have hinged on whether or not that particular housing visitor had ever had to cope with young children in a room-and-kitchen. Jeannette Bouse’s complaint was ‘how do you classify peoples’ furniture, you are not going to put good furniture in a room-and-kitchen that’s soaking with dampness?’ Georgina Atkinson points out that ‘there could be folk who keep their house shining all the time but there can be folk who just clean their house for that kind of day’. Isa Hanlon remarks, ‘does it mean that the likes of me with six weans, who hasn’t got much, is going to be classified as dirty because I haven’t got big fancy furniture? Do I have to get into debt?’ ‘Type of people’ and ‘cleanliness’ were regarded as outrageous and judging ‘furniture’ was seen to favour those who had bought by hire purchase. In what was a fairly common experience, the Atkinsons were graded without having been seen by the visitor. Annie Mallon let the visitor into a neighbour’s house while they were away at work. Being out, apparently was no serious obstacle to being graded. The system seemed to operate smoothly whether or not people were actually seen by the visitor, and indeed, for all its validity, it probably made little difference either way. On average, the length of time spent with each resident seemed to be between two and three minutes. In spite of the casualness of the visits, the grade received largely determined the type and situation of the house offered.

An aspect which particularly disturbed the committee was that the unemployed in the community seemed to be discriminated against. In the west of Scotland it was a time of extremely high unemployment, job insecurity, weekly lay-offs and massive redundancies. (30) A number of families whose breadwinner had been made redundant complained about the poor quality of the offers they received and this seemed to apply irrespective of the condition of their present homes, length of tenancy or rent record. Although difficult to prove, these suspicions were regarded as particularly unfair. It meant that after years of waiting on the housing list, a man who had worked conscientiously all his life found that at a stroke he had lost both his job and his opportunity for a decent home.

During the television programme and again in the council, the Corporation promised to reform the grading system. The ‘Glasgow News’, featuring the visitor’s report, gloomily predicted that: (31)

It is very doubtful if the substance of grading will be abolished, even if the form of words is altered, because the whole machinery of house allocations depends on it. The fact is that a great deal of Corporation housing in Glasgow leaves a lot to be desired, and some of it is just plain lousy ... no one wants to live in these houses but - short of knocking them down - someone has to.

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