Editing Public housing (section)

== History ==
[[File:Boundary Street 1890.jpg|thumb|200px|[[Boundary Estate|Boundary Street]] in 1890; three years later, the [[London County Council]] began [[slum clearance]].|alt=]]

Social housing had existed sporadically prior to modern developments. The oldest still in use is the 16th-century [[Fuggerei]] in [[Augsburg]], [[Bavaria]].

The origins of modern municipal housing lie in the dramatic [[Urbanization|urban population increase]] caused by the [[Industrial Revolution]] of the 19th century. In the large cities of the period, many social commentators, such as [[Octavia Hill]] and [[Charles Booth (philanthropist)|Charles Booth]] reported on the squalor, sickness and immorality that arose. [[Henry Mayhew]], visiting [[Bethnal Green]], wrote in ''[[The Morning Chronicle]]'':
{{blockquote|text=... roads were unmade, often mere alleys, houses small and without foundations, subdivided and often around unpaved courts. An almost total lack of drainage and sewerage was made worse by the ponds formed by the excavation of brickearth. Pigs and cows in back yards, noxious trades like boiling tripe, melting tallow, or preparing cat's meat, and slaughter houses, dustheaps, and "lakes of putrefying [[night soil]]" added to the filth.<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22751 |contribution=Bethnal Green: Building and Social Conditions from 1837 to 1875 |title=A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 11: Stepney, Bethnal Green |year=1998 |pages=120–126 |access-date=14 November 2006 |archive-date=28 September 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928042534/http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22751 |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

Some [[Philanthropy|philanthropists]] began to provide housing in [[Apartment building|tenement blocks]], and some factory owners built entire villages for their workers, such as [[Saltaire]] in 1853 and [[Port Sunlight]] in 1888. It was in 1885, after the report from a [[royal commission]] in England, that the state first took an interest. This led to the [[Housing of the Working Classes Act 1885|Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1885]], which empowered [[Local Government Board]]s to shut down unhealthy properties and encouraged them to improve the housing in their areas.

The [[City of London Corporation]] built [[tenements]] in the [[Farringdon Road]] in 1865.<ref>{{cite book|last=Tarn|first=J. N.|title=Five Per Cent Philanthropy: An Account of Housing in Urban Areas Between 1840 and 1914|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yCQ9AAAAIAAJ|year=1973|publisher=CUP Archive|isbn=978-0-521-08506-9|pages=42, 61}}</ref> The world's first large-scale housing project<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/heritage/boundary-of-old-nichol-s-vice-filth-death-1-666236|title=BOUNDARY OF OLD NICHOL'S VICE, FILTH & DEATH|website=East London Advertiser|date=24 July 2008|access-date=26 February 2020|archive-date=21 September 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200921171157/https://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/heritage/boundary-of-old-nichol-s-vice-filth-death-1-666236|url-status=dead}}</ref> was built in London to replace one of the capital's most notorious slums – the [[Old Nichol]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mernick.co.uk/thhol/survunfi.html |newspaper=The London |date=12 March 1896 |title=To Check the Survival of the Unfit |access-date=13 November 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061112082939/http://www.mernick.co.uk/thhol/survunfi.html |archive-date=12 November 2006 |df=dmy-all }}</ref> Nearly 6,000 individuals were crammed into the packed streets, where one child in four died before his or her first birthday. [[Arthur Morrison]] wrote the influential ''[[A Child of the Jago]]'', an account of the life of a child in the slum, which sparked a public outcry. Construction of the [[Boundary Estate]] was begun in 1890 by the [[Metropolitan Board of Works]] and completed by the then-recently formed [[London County Council]] in 1900.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22752 |title=A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 11: Stepney, Bethnal Green |year=1998 |pages=126–132 |access-date=14 November 2006 |archive-date=11 February 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070211025605/http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22752 |url-status=live }}</ref>

The success of this project spurred many local councils to embark on similar construction schemes in the early 20th century. The [[Arts and Crafts movement]] and [[Ebenezer Howard]]'s [[Garden city movement|garden city ideas]] led to the leafy [[London County Council]] [[cottage estate]]s such as firstly [[Totterdown Fields]] and later [[Old Oak and Wormholt|Wormholt and Old Oak]]. The [[First World War]] indirectly provided a new impetus, when the poor physical health and condition of many urban recruits to the [[British Army]] was noted with alarm. In 1916, 41% of conscripts were unfit to serve. This led to a campaign known as ''[[Homes fit for heroes]]'' and in 1919 the Government first compelled councils to provide housing, helping them to do so through the provision of [[subsidies]], under the [[Housing Act 1919]].<ref name="Hollow 2011">{{cite web |url=https://www.academia.edu/1593132 |title=Suburban Ideals on England's Interwar Council Estates |first=Matthew |last=Hollow |year=2011 |access-date=29 December 2012 |archive-date=11 August 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130811103753/http://www.academia.edu/1593132/Suburban_Ideals_on_Englands_Interwar_Council_Estates |url-status=live }}</ref> Public housing projects were tried out in some European countries and the United States in the 1930s, but only became widespread globally after [[the Second World War]].