On a more general criticism - the history of public housing is rather poor. Neither the council estates of Britain, the HLM's of France, or the projects of the US are nice places to live. Could they do better this time? Maybe. But I could certainly imagine public housing being one area where contracting out stuff wouldn't be a bad experiment.
Personal anecdote: In Poland I lived in model workers' housing built by the Nazis in the thirties. For one person the apartment wasn't bad - more room than I needed, so-so otherwise. But it was intended for a family, and while it would certainly be livable for one, we're not talking particularly good living conditions.
It's worse in the city, where I believe developers are offering social housing out in the sticks to offset exclusive development in the central area.
Still, it was better than nothing, better than the places poor workers lived in before. But should it have been done better? No question. Yet again, was it more of a money question or a planning question? I tend to believe the latter. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The problem seems more about how to keep these places functioning, clean and save after several decades. Maintenance and construction are not the same budget.
PFI grapples with the same issues - what kind of services will be provided for the duration? The HLMs show that rules or regulations from 20 years back are not always applicable - or enforced.
The problem is not public or private ownership, PFI or public housing - it's how to run these things over long periods when there is little benefit (political or monetary) for anyone to do it. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
However, for a few brief years before and after the regime change, at least here in Hungary, things changed: newly built public housing became more liveable, with roofs and fewer floors and gardens and such.
Then again, a few years later, public housing construction came to a virtual standstill. And private investors on the housing market focus on rich customers. Thus the old concrete high-rises remain as affordable housing, one of ever lower quality.
Germany, of course, took a very different path: with incredible amounts of money, the construction of private homes and the dismantling of concrete block houses was supported. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Of course, one real issue is that as Jerome notes, part of the reason many of these areas are still nice is perhaps that they passed out of council ownership in the post war period.
Likewise, there are a whole host of public buildings (swimming pools, health centres and the like) that have lasted seventy odd years. Sure, we're looking at replacing them now, but they provided a lot more value than the crumbling efforts of the sixties and seventies.
It was for Elliott's pointing out that, if we're so wealthy now, why aren't we putting a commensurate amount of wealth into the public realm? His article focuses mainly on education, not the "welfare state". He's talking about how much we're willing to put into public education, and he's comparing to a time when the willingness was greater -- in relative terms, of course (your comparison, 30s/today, of the absolute sums invested omits to mention the enormous overall increase in wealth from then to now). And he's talking about a kind of pride in quality public infrastructure that was neglected in the 60s and 70s before being mugged and left for dead by Thatcherism in the 80s.
Essentially, he's saying that education belongs in the public realm, that it has been skimped on for far too long (including by New Labour's "harnessing" private capital), and that this must change. A1 for me.
