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Abstract

Between 1960 and 1982, over five million new homes were built in the United Kingdom, and the proportion of owner-occupied dwellings increased to 59 per cent from just under 50 per cent in 1970.1 There was a sharp drop in local authority housing starts in 1977, and the decline in public-sector housing activity continued until 1982; the number of housing association dwellings built in 1982 was only just over half the number built in 1978.2 As housing starts decreased, the total number of households in Britain increased, by over a million between 1971 and 1981, and the average household size dropped from 3.09 people in 1961 to 2.64 in 1982.3 There has been a concomitant increase in housing provision for single people and the elderly, the number of single person pensioner households more than doubling in the 20 years before 1982.4 The Parker Morris Report recommended standards for public and private sector housing, first published in 1961 and made mandatory for public housing in 1969, were withdrawn in April 1981.5

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© 1988 Lynn F. Pearson

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Pearson, L.F. (1988). Communal Living Today. In: The Architectural and Social History of Cooperative Living. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19122-2_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19122-2_11

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