A lot of people on this forum (or at least those who were around at the time) would agree that in the 1970s/80s/90s, under successive governments of both political persuasions, that the railways did not get a fair share of investment from the state, possibly in part because there were insufficient influential voices arguing persuasively for such investment. Now substitute the word 'housing' for 'railways' (and particularly social housing) and add a multiplying factor and you get the disastrous situation we are in now. Politicians just wouldn't get to grips with the subject, as housing shortages grew, housebuilding rates shrunk, council housing got sold off (I'm not going to take the easy option and slag off Margaret Thatcher, because in theory councils were meant to build new homes with the proceeds of sales) and everything was done to persuade those with the means to become owner-occupiers. The revolutionary (in their day) Rent Act of 1975 and Housing Act of the same year which were meant to improve the lot of the private tenant, force private landlords to do repairs or have the properties compulsorily purchased etc were treated as pests by certain local authorities (including some Labour-controlled ones) and routinely ignored. In other authorities, with the one I worked for (Camden) at the forefront, great attempts were made to use and enforce the Acts for the good of tenants, but we were frustrated at many levels e.g. Rent Tribunals and High Court actions, and in the end you realise you're banging your head against a brick wall with too many having a vested interest in perpetuating bad conditions and skyhigh rents. Housing Associations were being established here, there and everywhere and were becoming the only way that any new social housing was being built, and among the genuinely good examples of these were others which did virtually nothing or, more alarmingly, were set up as 'scams' basically to get public money and enrich a few individuals. My own attempt to do something about what I considered to be such an operation in my borough, and getting nowhere, led to my leaving my job in the end when libel lawyers prevented a London Weekend TV programme to which I'd contributed going out - I'll just say that two people who became quite powerful in London politics (and both still alive) would have come under scrutiny. Then twenty five years or so ago housing associations/trusts were 'encouraged' to take over remaining council housing stock, so that none remains in whole swathes of the country, and led to Grenfell House and its neighbours being controlled by an organisation one stage removed (in theory, anyway) from its actual owners, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It has, of course, taken the death of dozens (no exaggeration there) to shine a light on the problem, but for how long?
