20th century Housing History for the Humberside Region 21.

Following Chamberlain’s Housing Act of 1923 (s.p.b.), Wheatley’s Act of the following year increased housing subsidies to local authorities to build working class housing which would rent at between £6 and £9 per week, the period for which the subsidy would be paid being increased to 40 years. Even though this was passed by the minority Labour government of Ramsey MacDonald it resulted in the building of half a million inter-war council homes. In 1925 Baldwin’s second Conservative government reduced the subsidy, reduced the maximum size of house eligible and reduced the requirement for a fixed bath to be installed. Greenwood’s Housing Act of 1930, during the tenure of Ramsey MacDonald’s second Labour administration, again increased house-building subsidies but this time the focus was to build houses specifically for families having to leave houses earmarked for slum clearance and, crucially, the new houses had to be built before the other houses were demolished. This was also the Housing Act that first allocated government subsidies to build small homes for the elderly (pensioner’s bungalows or flats). Incidentally, Greenwood Avenue in Hull is named after this government minister, although the plan for him to personally officially ‘open’ North Hull Estate had to be shelved at the last minute.
In a similar vein to the 1930 Act, the 1935 Housing Act allocated new council housing for families defined as currently living in overcrowded accommodation (s.p.b.s).
Inter-war council housing generally is not too difficult to distinguish from post-war council housing, the roofs usually built to a hip-roof style (rather than to the gable ends) and the proportions of the rooms, and house generally, were smaller than 1950s houses. Nevertheless, the norm was for inter-war council and subsidy houses to have both a small front garden and rear garden. It has been noted that some modern housing estates have almost the same dimensions and much less garden space than these inter-war houses, the 21st century homes often selling for around £200,000!