A Short Profile of Housing Conditions

Abstract

Figure 2.1 shows the stock of dwellings and the number of households in England and Wales at decennial intervals between 1911 and 1971. The figures indicate that until 1961 there were more households than dwellings, but that by 1971 this inequality had been reversed: there were nearly a quarter of a million more dwellings than households. However, these figures should be interpreted with caution. Comparisons between the aggregate number of dwellings and households can be misleading if they are used to establish the extent of housing ‘shortages’ or ‘surpluses’. One reason for this is that the number of households is not independent of the number of dwellings. To some extent household formation rates are constrained by dwelling availability. Another reason is that such figures do not reveal the extent of regional and local shortages. If these are pronounced, a national surplus may be of limited use given the well-known spatial immobility of many households. And, in fact, the number of vacant dwellings in 1971 was over twice as large as the excess of total dwellings over households, with the result that over 800 thousand households were sharing dwellings.