Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate

Rediscovered Riches No. 3 Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate Essays and Letters by Octavia Hill Edited by Robert Whelan London First published February 1998 © Civitas 1998 All rights reserved ISBN 0-255 36431-8 Bookman 10 point Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Blenheim Industrial Park, Newmarket Road Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP33 3TU Contents Page The Authors iv Foreword Debby Ounsted v Acknowledgements vii Editor’s Introduction Robert Whelan 1 Essays and Letters by Octavia Hill 1 Cottage Property in London (1866) 43 2 Four Years’ Management of a London Court (1869) 51 3 Landlords and Tenants in London (1871) 65 4 Selections from Octavia Hill’s Letters to Fellow-Workers (1875-1890) 81 5 Common Sense and the Dwellings of the Poor (1883) 94 6 The Influence of Blocks of Flats on Character (1891) 104 7 Municipal Housing for the Poor (1901) 111 8 Advice to Fellow-Workers in Edinburgh (1902) 114 9 Housing Difficulties: Management versus Re-construction (1904) 122 Notes 126 The Authors Octavia Hill (1838-1912) was born in Wisbech into a family with a radical campaigning tradition on both sides. Her maternal grandfather, Thomas Southwood Smith, was a pioneer of sani-tary reform. Her father edited a radical newspaper promoting Robert Owen’s socialist ideas. Following the bankruptcy of her father and his complete nervous breakdown, Octavia moved to London with her mother and sisters. She helped her mother with the management of a workshop in which children from a Ragged School were taught to make dolls’ furniture, then trained as a copyist of Old Master paintings under John Ruskin. In 1864 Ruskin put up the money to acquire the leases of three houses in Marylebone which he put under Octavia’s management. She developed a style of managing working-class housing which put as much emphasis on improving the tenants as the tenements. Other supporters purchased property for her to manage, or gave her the management of their existing property. By the mid-1870s Octavia estimated that she was responsible for 3,000 tenants. The success of her methods led the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to place large estates under her care. She did pioneering work in the movement to preserve open spaces and was one of the founders of the National Trust in 1895. She was a founder member of the Charity Organisation Society and maintained its opposition to state welfare until her death. She was a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws which met from 1905-1908. At the time of her death Octavia was estimated to be managing about 1,900 flats and houses, but she refused all requests to form an organisation to perpetuate her work. Robert Whelan is the Assistant Director of the Health and Welfare Unit at the IEA. His publications include Mounting Greenery, IEA Education Unit 1988; Choices in Childbearing, Committee on Population and the Economy 1992; Broken Homes and Battered Children and Teaching Sex in Schools, Family Education Trust 1994 and 1995; Making a Lottery of Good Causes (with Roger Cummins) and The Corrosion of Charity, IEA, 1995 and 1996; and The Cross and the Rainforest (with Paul Haffner and Joseph Kirwan), Acton Institute and Eerdmans, 1996. iv Foreword Octavia Hill’s ideas can be found at the heart of most of today’s social policy pre-occupations. Her philosophy was to develop the potential and self-suffi-ciency of all those around her. Her aims were to find employment for young people, to improve education and opportunities for the poor, especially women, to find a way to provide rented housing without subsidy for those with low incomes, to improve housing standards, to create cleaner air and to maintain open spaces in the heart of the industrialised city. However, what marks her out from so many radical intellectuals is that she was able to give concrete expression to her theories. Octavia Hill’s housing work seems increasingly relevant in the 1990s as housing managers struggle to run estates whose residents are heavily disadvantaged by every social indicator. The current emphasis is on Housing Plus, an approach under which housing association landlords do more than just provide homes which people on low incomes can afford. Housing Associations are finding ways of helping to revitalise communities by initiating training, employment, childcare, leisure and many other projects with their tenants, which will help to improve their opportunities and reduce the poverty which many housing association tenants face. Two years ago we decided to begin each Committee of Manage-ment meeting of the Octavia Hill Housing Trust with a reading from something either by or about Octavia. There is no danger of running out of readings as Octavia had so much to say which is relevant, not only to today’s big issues, but to the day-to-day problems caused by poor administration and shortage of time. It is strange that she is so much less well-known than other eminent Victorians. Perhaps this is due to her commitment to operating on a small scale, and to her belief that she should only set a pattern for others to learn from and develop. The large organisations which memorialised some of her contemporaries were not for Octavia. Indeed the Housing Trust which she founded, and which still flourishes in London one hundred years on, only took her name into its title a few years ago. v ... - tailieumienphi.vn