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Howard, Matthew
(2020).
URL: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/50YearsOfLaw/?p=210
Abstract
50 years ago, in Pettitt v Pettitt, Lord Diplock famously confirmed the emergence of a 'propertyowning, particularly a real-property-mortgaged-to-a-building-society-owning, democracy' (824) in post-war Britain. This chapter takes this statement as the departure point for demonstrating how ownership rhetoric and the ideological commitment to private homeownership has informed decades of development in housing policy. After providing an overview of the approach successive governments have taken to housing policy, which combined to create quite a problematic outlook for the public provision of homes, the chapter turns its attention to the recent case of Z v Hackney LBC and Anor. That case exemplifies the difficulties wrought by the public housing environment, compounded as they are by a rights framework which gives little weight to the matter of considerable, but perhaps more nebulous, socio-economic rights. The chapter argues that this presents problems for geographical and political senses of belonging.