Low-cost housing in a high-cost city: London’s approach to affordable housing | Lecture by Kath Scanlon
An ARCHES and School of Landscape Architecture and Planning Lecture Series Event
London, an undisputed global city, is well known for having some of the world’s most expensive housing but also boasts a substantial amount of low-cost social and affordable housing. Visionary philanthropists shocked by the living conditions described by Dickens created some of the world’s first social housing estates in the nineteenth century, and local governments went on to build most of the city’s new homes in the decades after WWII. This talk sketches the historic roots of affordable housing in London, explains how it is currently built and operated, and explores current political and practical challenges—some of which are shared by Arizona cities despite their very different contexts.
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About Kath Scanlon
Kath Scanlon is Distinguished Policy Fellow at the London School of Economics, where she has been based for 25 years. An economist and planner, she specializes in evaluating the impact of housing policy at local and national level. She has been conducting research into aspects of London’s affordable housing system for two decades and has led a number of comparative studies of European housing systems. Kath has advised the Greater London Authority and national government departments and regularly speaks to civic groups and decisionmakers. She is originally from southern Arizona.
Header image available via Creative Commons.
