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Policy and Politics, Vol. 7 (1979),39-54
Filtering Theory,
Housing Policy and the Legitimation of Inequality
Martin Boddy
Fred Gray
This paper explores the relationship between theory and social policy.
It does so by focussing on the relationship of a particular family of
models of the housing market to public intervention in that market
through housing policy. These models may be grouped under the
umbrella term, 'filtering theory'.
An early version of filtering theory was incorporated by the 'Chicago
School' urban sociologists into the field of 'human ecology' as an
explanation of urban growth and neighbourhood change. The 'human
ecologists' translated the ecological concepts of competition and
dominance, invasion and succession into theories of urban social-spatial
structure and change.
1
Burgess conceptualized the city as an idealised
series of concentric rings centred on a Central Business District?
Around this is a 'zone of transition' and rings of successively higher
status residential use as one moves outwards. With growth and
expansion of the city the zone of transition is invaded at its inner edge
by business and light-manufacturing and there is a general tendency for
'each inner zone to extend its area by invasion of the next outer zone.
This aspect of expansion may be called succession .. .'.3Hoyt later
developed a 'sector model' of urban residential structure and change,
from an empirical study of land values in Chicago. Hoyt's research was
commissioned by the US government, used data supplied by the Real
Property Inventories of the Civil Works Administration and was
designed to 'guide the development of housing and the creation of a
sound mortgage market'4 by attempting to predict the location and
'change of areas of different land value and residential status.
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40 Policy and Politics
Significantly, therefore, Hoyt's work was initiated by the desire to
develop a particular type of policy intervention, gaining, later, a degree
of 'academic' respectability. Hoyt stressed the economic mechanisms
of changing residential values rather than the socio-ecological
mechanisms of Burgess. But, as with Burgess' model, his theory implied
a succession of occupancy in dwellings originally built for higher-income
families.
This succession of occupancy was later developed within the field of
economics into more formal models of filtering at the level of individual
households. Filtering at the individual level is thus the dynamic element
adding up to the aggregate models of city growth and neighbourhood
change. In economic terms filtering theory suggests that as new
dwellings are built for higher-income households, the price of existing
houses (rent or purchase price) gradually declines and they become
available for lower-income households. Thus Ratcliff described filtering
as:
'" the changing of occupancy as the housing that is occupied by one income
group becomes available to the next lower income group as a result of decline
in market price.
5
Defined thus, filtering simply describes what Grigsby termed 'the
principal dynamic feature of the housing market'.6 There is no
necessary implication in this. definition that lower-income households
thereby obtain better housing, for quality and condition also decline
through time.
This strictly economic definition has, however, commonly been
overlain with a welfare concept. Thus, according to Grigsby:
filtering occurs only when value declines more rapidly than quality so that
families can obtain either higher quality and more space at the same price,
or the same quality and space at a lower price than formerly. 7
If new building creates excess supply higher up the scale then prices
may indeed tend to decline more rapidly than quality, allowing
Johnston to summarize filtering as the mechanism:
... by which the higher-income groups periodically demand new housing and
their former homes are bought by lower-income groups, for whom they
represent an improvement in living standards. Thus homes slowly filter down
the social scale and individuals filter up the housing scale. ~
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Boddy and Gray: Filtering Theory 41
The provision of new housing may thus have indirect effects as well as
direct. For a proportion of the households which move into the new
housing, thus benefiting directly, will leave behind them vacant
dwellings into which others may move.
The indirect effects of new housing provision have been studied
using models of vacancy chains and chains of moves. A chain, or
sequence of moves is initiated when a new unit is built, vacancies
filtering down the income/social scale and households filtering up the
housing scale. The chain is stopped either when a vacancy is filled by
a household which leaves no vacancy behind it - typically newly
formed households, or when a vacated dwelling becomes unavailable to
a further household - typically through demolition, closure, or
conversion to non-residential use. Most studies have focussed on chains
initiated by new building, but vacancies may also be created, and chains
initiated by household dissolution or conversion of buildings to
residential use for example. Empirical studies of vacancy chains,
relating these to filtering theory have been carried out in America and
the UK, a number of which are examined in more detail later.
FILTERING THEORY
AND
HOUSING POLICY
Filtering theory is not merely a description of housing market processes
but offers an explanation of how change occurs. By focussing on the
indirect as well as direct effects of exogenous change in the housing
market it poses a number of different options for public policy directed
to meeting housing need. Smith, for example, defines filtering as:
'" an indirect process for meeting the housing demand of a lower-income
group. When ncw quality housing is produced for higher-income households,
houses given up by those households become available to the lower-income
group.9
Filtering theory thus offers the possibility that the housing needs of
lower -income households can be met, indirectly, by the provision of
new housing for better-off households by the private sector rather than
directly through subsidised or public housing. Lowry summarized the
policy implications of filtering as follows:
A general improvement of housing standards can be achieved within a frame-
work of the private housing market by a process described as 'filtering'. Direct
government programmes which provide subsidised new housing for lower or
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42 Policy and Politics
middle-income families interfere with an orderly market process that would
otherwise provide second-hand-but socially adequate-housing for the same
families at prices within their means.!
0
Daniels has argued that:
What may not be immediately obvious is that the filtering process results from
competitive market forces. By establishing prices for the services of the
existing stock of dwellings, the housing market allocates the stock in such a
way as to maximise its aggregate value, hence minimising requirements of new
capital expenditure.!!
Having compared direct housing provision for low-income households
with indirect reliance on filtering he concludes that:
public housing and subsidies that enable low-income families to purchase
new housing are questionable solutions to the problem of improving housing
conditions.!2
More generally a review of American Urban Housing published in 1968
observed that, with few exceptions:
all major housing subsidy programs have been used primarily to promote new
construction and, to a lesser extent, substantial rehabilitation. The basic
rationale -[or this emphasis on new construction is that new projects on vacant
sites increase the total housing stock. So long as there is some interplay
between different sectors of the market, an addition to the stock of housing
tends to relieve prices for everyone. Thus the construction of moderate-
income projects in the suburbs may indirectly help to lessen shortages in
central city slums.
13
It is no accident, given the basis of filtering theory in laisser-faire
economics, that it is in the USA that the concept of filtering has been
most firmly and overtly incorporated into housing policy. The develop-
ment of direct intervention through public housing
in
the USA was
initially identified with mitigating the effects of the depression and was
subsequently linked to the war effort and the associated need for
workers' housing. From the early 1950s, however, the development of
public housing explicitly to meet the housing needs of lower-income
households, was strongly opposed by those interests committed to the
free market. To quote Fuerst:
Public housing has existed in the United States since 1937, but through the
efforts of the real estate lobby, segments of the business community and the
press, its growth has been successfully stunted since its inception.!4
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Boddy and Gray: Filtering Theory
43
Filtering and British Housing Policy
In the USA the debate over housing policy is frequently polarised into
public intervention versus free-market, a polarisation reflected, in turn,
in the relationship of fIltering theory to housing policy. In Britain,
however, where the principle of public housing was accepted earlier and
implemented to a much greater extent, the concept of filtering was
directly linked to the level at which intervention should be directed,
which groups in society should be provided with public housing. These
early concepts of filtering related more to the prevalent broad view of
society held by those responsible for philanthropic and early State
intervention, ideas of individual betterment and upward mobility, than
to substantial ideas of how the housing market operated.
The '5 per cent philanthropy' movement in the latter half of the
19th century met the needs of only a small proportion of the working
class since the rents charged excluded all but the skilled and other high-
income strata. Ironically, those households displaced by the
construction of the new model dwellings rarely occupied this housing.
Sydney Waterlow, founder of the Improved Industrial Dwelling
Company in 1863, justified the failure of such schemes to house those
in the most inadequate housing as follows:
The lowest of all, those comprising what may emphatically be called the
lower orders, and who are least likely to appreciate the comforts of a decent
home, will surely receive their share of benefits enjoyed proportionately by
those above them.
We
must take the class as of various degrees; the upper, middle and lower of
the labouring classes; it would not have been right to build down to the lowest
class, because you must have built a class of tenement which
I
hope none of
them would be satisfied with at the end of 50 years; we have rather tried to
build for the first class, and by lifting them up leave more room for the second
and third who are below them.l5
In similar vein James Hole argued in his famous work The Homes of the
Working Classes (1886) that:
." by increasing the number of first class houses for mechanics, the vacated
tenements increase the supply for the second and third classes and thus all
classes are benefited.16
Finally, a witness to the
1885
Royal Commission on the Housing of
the Working Classes in Scotland added a spatial dimension in arguing
by analogy that the effect of building new houses was:
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Policy and Politics
... just the same as if you threw a stone into a pool of water, you have a radius
of people getting out and out, each one driving his neighbour out. The better
class people went further away and got better houses; the people next in grade
to them took possession of their houses and so on. The bad houses were
totally destroyed, and the people who lived in those bad houses took the next
worst houses .., the whole effect of the operation was to compel almost the
whole community to provide themselves with better accommodation.
l
?
Such views implied that the slum-problem was best attacked by
building for 'better-class' households rather than providing new
dwellings for slum dwellers themselves. Significantly, also, the 'working
class' was seen notin monolithic terms but as an amalgam of sub-groups,
to be treated differently. A recent study by Byrne
18
has suggested the
nature of the residential divisions created within the working class in
the late 19th/early 20th century by differences in work position, and
by the operation of the housing market - in which the concept of
f1ltering played a significant role in both initiating and legitimating the
divisions. Filtering theory in the early period served to legitimate
existing inequalities and divisions and to account for the continuing
slum problem and the appalling housing conditions experienced
particularly by the unskilled and casual labouring groups within the
working class.
The concept of filtering remained important in the early develop-
ment of public housing provision. Referring to Birmingham, Schifferes
has observed that:
In 1914 Chamberlain advocated municipal development of land on the City's
outskirts on a properly planned scale ... Chamberlain had no illusions that this
was an immediate remedy for the thousands living in back-to-backs in central
Birmingham: 'ecological processes' (i.e. filtering up) might ensure that in a
generation the slums would die a natural death.
19
The groups within the working class for whom direct provision of new
public housing would be achieved was crucially governed at this time
by the relation between rents and incomes. Subsidies provided for
'I
under the housing acts of Chamberlain, Addison and Wheatley were
only partially effective. They were unable to bridge the gap between
rents and the incomes of those lower down the scale who therefore had
to rely on dwellings filtering down from above. A report in the 1920s
noted that:
When post-war building began, it was hoped that there might be a gradual
movement of the working-class population of the slums into better houses.
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Boddy and Gray: Filtering Theory 45
This might occur in two ways; either the slum dweller might go dircct into a
ncw house or a proccss of 'filtering up' might occur undcr which the slum
dweller would move from the slum into a better pre-war house, the tcnant of
which would, in turn, movc into a new house.2o
The report went on to observe that although both processes had
occurred the scale was disappointingly small.
There has been little overt incorporation of filtering concepts into
official post-war housing policy or analyses of the housing system.
While the recent Housing Policy21 Green Paper emphasizes the
importance of household mobility and maintains established policies
of encouraging the growth of owner-occupation, there is no specific
reference to the concept, as one might have expected, say, in an
equivalent document in the USA. In the inner-city context, however,
according to the Final Report of the Lambeth Inner Area Study:
It can, of coursc, bc argued that those who move from outcr London creatc
space which can be taken up by people from Inner London. Such 'filtcring',
as it is called, has undoubtedly taken place in the private sector.
22
In Britain, significantly, it is the influential Building Societies
Association which has made greatest use of the filtering concept -
significan t in view of the strong support of the BSA for, and vested
interest in, the maintenance and expansion of the private market in
housing, and its opposition to government intervention. Giving evidence
to the government Housing Finance Review the BSA asserted that:
The housing market must be seen as a ladder. People join at the bottom end;
they move gradually upwards until they reach old age when they may move
down again. Eventually they die and leave the ladder completely. The
important point is that there is no room for people to come in at the bottom
of thc market unlcss people alrcady there are moving upwards.
23
This assertion has been repeatedly used by the BSA to justify
CO:1-
centrating scarce financial resources on the already well off and well
housed. It has been used: to oppose reducing subsidy to better-off
house-buyers by cutting tax relief on mortgage interest at higher than
basic rates; to oppose tl~e ]jinitatiol1 of tax relief to loans up to £25
thousand introduced in March 1974?4 to justify raising the Special
Advance Limit from £13 thousand to £20 thousand in January 1975
and argue for further increases in the future?
5
to support the sale of
council houses, end the 'holding down' of council rents
26
and to argue
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Policy and Politics
that 'the quickest and cheapest way of reducing council waiting lists is
not to build more council houses but to encourage existing tenants to
move to the owner-occupation sector'.
2 7
More generally the BSA assert
that 'Any measures aimed at people at the bottom of the market or in
the council sector at the expense of those further up-market seem likely
to be counter-productive,.28
In
effect, the BSA model likens the
housing market to an escalator rather than a ladder. Households joining
at the bottom cannot improve their housing circumstances in relative
terms since those 'already there are moving upwards', The BSA's view,
like that of Daniels' quoted earlier, derives from a strong free-market
approach to housing. Having presented the 'ladder theory' the BSA
maintains that
the conclusion that must be drawn from this analysis is that policy measures
which, directly or indirectly, are aimed at particular sectors of housing are
likely to create distortions in the market.
29
THE VALIDITY OF FILTERING THEORY
Household mobility and turnover, and exchanges of existing dwellings
are obviously of considerable importance in a restricted sense in
meeting the housing needs of households with different characteristics
and of particular households at different stages in the life cycle.
30
The
more important question to be addressed is, however, the theoretical
and empirical validity of a general theory of filtering embracing the
entire housing stock and hence the validity of the policy implications
based on such a theory.
First, one may question the volume of housing available to filter
down to lower-income households. Since the distribution of household
incomes tends towards a pyramidal shape, building new houses for
those high up the pyramid will simply not release enough houses for
those further down where the pyramid is wider. There are too few high-
price and high-quality houses to meet the needs of lower-income house-
holds. This objection was raised by Fisher and Ratcliff as early as 1936,
arguing from a study of the frequency distribution of dwellings in
England and Wales by rent that to supply 10% of the lowest group
through filtering the stock at the highest level would have to grow by
45% since the number of units in the former group is 4~ times the
latter.
31
Such a level of overproduction would be uneconomic for
builders, since prices would be depressed below construction costs,
without massive subsidy on high cost housing units - the per unit
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Boddy and Gray: Filtering Theory
47
subsidy to stimulate indirect provision of low-cost housing undoubtedly
exceeding that required to stimulate direct provision.
Secondly, filtering may occur in an economic sense, as defined by
Ratcliff, but without any increase in the quality of housing occupied
by lower-income households. For falling prices as a result of increased
supply higher up the scale may lead to a more rapid deterioration in
house condition. As Lowry pointed out, falling rental returns are likely'
Ito lead to undermaintenance by landlords, and, ultimately, abandonment
by landlord and tenant alike.32 The problem is most relevant where the
proportion of privately rented property is high-particularly in older
urban areas with a large proportion of houses at risk. The effect of
value-depreciation on owner-occupiers would be a reduction in imputed
rental income rather than any 'real' loss. However, an analogous
situation occurs in the British situation when lower-income house-
holds are forced to filter upwards into inner-city owner-occupation by
inability to obtain accommodation in the public or private rented
sectors. A significant proportion of such households, having brought
cheaper, older property, are unable to afford repairs and maintenance
necessary to maintain the value of the property and are, in effect,
disinvesting as the property deteriorates.33 Filtering theory 'ignores
evid~J1ce suggesting that accelerated filtering, unaccompanied by
market support mechanisms for the inner city, accelerates decay'.34 It
assumes that dwellings vacated at the bottom of the scale would be
vacated and demolished. The evidence of low-income households in
unfit houses demonstrates the assumption to be false. Thus, according
to Ratcliff:
The end product of filtering, at the bottom of the chain reaction, is
substandard housing; thus filtering produces the very blight which we seek to
remedy.3S
Empirical Approaches to Filtering
The filtering process has been explored in a series of empirical studies
in the USA and UK. These have generally sought to establish the
average number of moves or vacancies created by different forms of
new housing provision - high-cost unsubsidised versus low-cost
subsidised, public sector versus private sector etc. Sands identified the
policy relevance of chain-length in two respects:
First, it may be considered as a multiplier, providing an indication of the total
number of households who benefit (by having an opportunity to move) from
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48
Policy and Politics
the new construction. Second, if the vacancy chain is long enough and if
successive households differ sufficiently in their attributes, housing policy
objectives may be achieved by indirect means.36
American studies have tended to focus on chain length. Lansing, Clifton
and Morgan,37 in a study of 1100 chains of moves in the USA in the
1960s, found the average chain length (number of households moving
as a result of a single new dwelling being occupied) resulting from
building houses costing under $15 thousand was 2.2 compared with 3.8
for those costing $25 thousand to $35 thousand; the price of houses
was also found to decline at successively lower places in individual
chains. The authors concluded that 'the poor are indirectly affected by
the construction of new housing, even if they do not occupy new
dwellings'3!! and White, on the basis of this study, concluded that:
Subsidised new housing will not, in general, be the most effective path to a
national policy goal of improving the overall match of families' needs with
available houses ... Subsidised housing will not have as large a multiplier effect
as new housing built for middle and higher income groups.39
Later studies in America and the UK have laid greater emphasis on
who benefits from chains of moves rather than simply focussing on
chain length. Thus Murie et ai, commenting on Lansing, Clifton and
Morgan's conclusions regarding benefits to poorer households suggest
that:
a closer examination of their findings suggests not only that this is not true of
all poor people (poor blacks are less well represented) but that poor people
in general are not well represented in proportion to this num ber in the whole
population. 40
A study by Sands in New York State indicated:
no clear advantage to either direct (subsidised) or indirect (high cost)
construction strategies. Both approaches were about equally effective in the
creation of turnover vacancies.
41
It was found that most chains initiated by subsidised family housing
were frequently temiinated by demolition or abandonment of a vacant
unit - over half in the Buffalo sample and 42 per cent in the Bronx.
Sands concluded that 'the vacancy chains generated by the most
expensive new housing had little effect on the housing need of low
income families' 4 2 and that 'subsidised central city housing was
generally the most effective in creating housing opportunities for low
income households'
.43
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Boddy and Gray: Filtering Theory
49
In a study of housing chains in West Central Scotland Watson found
that the average chain length resulting from building for owner-
occupation was 2.09 compared with 1.64 in the public (council)
sector
.44
The difference, however, was largely due to the proportion of
chains initiated in the public sector which ended in the demolition or
closure of a vacant dwelling, as a result of the local authorities' slum
clearance activities-48 per cent compared with 7 per cent of owner-
occupier chains. Thus although private-sector chains were longer, public
policy did more to meet the housing needs of lower income households
through direct housing provision and slum clearance coupled with
rehousing.
Finally, a study by Murie et al in Northern Ireland found that new
housing was disproportionately used by new households, particularly in
the private sector; 26 per cent of new dwellings were occupied directly
by new households without further moves being generated. This
obviously contradicts the assumption (made by the BSA for example)
that new households enter the housing market at the bottom and
move gradually upwards. A large proportion of new houses are
occupied by new households with the fmancial resources, and financial
status in the eyes of building societies or other credit sources, to buy
their way in half-way up the housing 'ladder'. Households included in
chains in the public sector generally had lower incomes and were more
likely to have been living in older housing and in overcrowded
conditions. Public sector chains were again found to be shorter due to
local authorities' impact on the slum problem. The authors concluded
that:
public sector sequences made more impact on those in inadequate
circumstances. In this way public control over allocation is more effective in
meeting need than the 'trickle down' effect of private development.
45
The empirical studies indicate that while turnover on a limited scale is
significant as a way of meeting housing need and matching the available
stock to households with different characteristics; these studies do not,
however, support the general validity of ftltering theory or the policy
conclusions which have frequently been drawn from that theory. For
while turnover does lead to indirect policy impacts, and the nature of
ftltering affects which groups benefit, it does not ensure that it is those
in greatest need who benefit most. The main conclusion to be drawn
from these studies is that direct aid in the form of subsidised or public
housing is the most effective and efficient strategy for improving the
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50 Policy and Politics
housing conditions of low-income households and the physical fabric of
the inner~ity. As Watson has put it, the reason that many households
in the UK do not benefit from new building programmes is simply 'the
unwillingness of many local authorities to provide for those in greatest
need'
.46
In
a similar vein, a study of the American Urban Programme
concluded that:
The allegations that public housing fails to reach the lowest income, least
competent and the most disorganised families are generally without merit.
The principal reason so many such families are not being served is that there is
so little public housing.
47
CONCLUSIONS
Filtering theory
The concept of fIltering is derived from a laisser-faire, market economy
view of how the housing system operates-or how it should··and has
in turn been used to support and legitimate this viewpoint in terms of
public policy. The persistence of inadequate housing and of high status
residential areas in the USA and UK, and the contradictory processes
of 'gentrification' and disinvestment by landlord and low income
owners indicate the empirical bankruptcy of fIltering as a general
description of the housing system. The numerical insignificance of high
quality dwellings, the effects of racial discrimination in the USA, and
subsidies such as tax relief on mortgage interest and untaxed capital
gains for home-owners in the UK all contradict the assumptions of the
theory. The concept is theoretically unsound and hence of only limited
empirical validity. To quote Murie et al again:
... filtering is an idealised conception of the operation of the housing market
under certain conditions. As those conditions do not obtain in practice
fIlteringceases to be a representationof what happensin the housingmarket.
The implication that filtering does or can occur becomes an untestable
assertion which is inseparable from the political associations of the idea_ In
other words, it becomes an assertion used to justify a reliance on the market
process and the capacity of that process to meet policy ends. It is an assertion
which is difficult to sustain in theoretical or empirical debate.
48
Filtering theory derives from a clear political and ideological position
which its translation into policy in turn supports. At the specific level of
housing policy, it legitinlates the persistence of gross inequalities in
housing provision, and of substandard housing, and justifies allocation
of resources and subsidies to those already well-off and well-housed
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Boddy and Gray: Filtering Theory 51
directing support away from those in greatest need. Household turnover
and mobility are important processes in the housing system. But to
generalize from these processes observed on a limited scale, to a general
model of filtering embracing the· entire housing stock is clearly
illegitimate and any policy conclusions derived from this problem
are inappropriate as a means of meeting housing need.
Alternatives
The access to housing resources of households of differing financial
status and other characteristics, and their mobility within the housing
system is structured by a set of financial and governmental institutions
situated within the broader economic, political and ideological
structure of society. These institutions define the opportunities and
constraints within which households are able to ex~rcise varying degrees
of preference and choice. In Britain, for example, local housing
authority allocation procedures and building society lending criteria are
the major factors determining the housing resources available to house-
holds with different characteristics.
49
To explain, therefore, the
structuring of access and mobility and the distribution of housing
resources, attention must be directed to these institutions in the first
instance, and their operations located within the broader social
structure; the approach embraced by the political economy of housing
and housing policy.
50
Within this approach housing 'policy' is identified not as the rational
reflection of objective theory (as proponents of fIltering theory might
argue); nor as intervention to 'correct' market imperfections; but
rather it is recognized as an integral element of the socio-economic,
political and ideological structure. Concepts of economic efficiency,
rational management, the customary validation of theory, and the
relationship of theory to empirical analysis are not thereby made
redundant, dissolving into a formless politically or ideologically
informed relativism. However they do become severely circumscribed
and redefined when their broader context is realised, as this paper has
attempted to do for the limited concept of 'ftltering theory'.
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52
NOTES
Policy and Politics
The authors would like to thank Tony Fielding, John Holmes and Simon Duncan
of Sussex University for their comments on an earlier version of this paper and, in
particular, Alan Murie of SAUS, Bristol University for his comments and
suggestions at various stages in its production.
1. See The City. R.E. Park and E.W. Burgess, (Chicago, Chicago University
Press, 1967) (first published 1924).
2. E.w. Burgess, 'The Growth of the City: Introduction to a Research
Project', Chapter II of R.E. Park and E.W. Burgess, op.cit.
3. Ibid,
SO.
4. H. Hoyt, The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighbourhoods in
American Cities, Washington D.C., Federal Housing Administration, Foreword.
5.
R.U. Ratcliff, Urban Land Economics, (New York, McGraw HilI, 1949),
321-22.
6. W. Grigsby, Housing Markets and Public Policy, (Philadelphia, Philadelphia
University Press, 1963),99.
7. Ibid, 95.
8. R.J. Johnston, Urban Residential Patterns, (London, Bell, 1971), 87.
9. W.F. Smith, 'Filtering and Neighbourhood Change', Research Report, 24,
University of California Centre for Real Estate and Urban Management, 1964, 1.
10. I.S. Lowry, 'Filtering and Housing Standards: A Conceptual Analysis' in
A.N. Page and W.R. Seyfried, Urban Analysis, (New York, Scott, Foreman and
Co., 1970),339-47,339.
11. C. Daniels, 'The Filtering Process and its Implications for Housing Policy',
Ruman Ecology Forum, Fall 1974, 18-20, 19.
12. Ibid, 12.
13. A Decent Home. Report of the president's committee on Urban Housing
(Chairman Edgar, F. Kaiser), (Washington, 1968),70.
14. J.S. Fuerst (ed.), Public Housing in Europe and America, (London,
Croom Helm, 1974), 134.
15. Quoted in J.N. Tarn, Five Per Cent Philanthropy, (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1973),53, and E. Gauldie, Cruel Habitations, (London, George
Allen and Unwin, 1974), 234, respectively.
16. Quoted in C.J. Watson, 'Household Movement in West Central Scotland:
A Study of Housing Chains and Filtering', Occasional Paper 26, (Centre for Urban
and Regional Studies, Birmingham University, 1973), 1.
17. Quoted in LN. Tarn, Working-Class Housing in 19th Century Britain,
London, Lund Humphries for the Architectural Association, 1969), 10.
18. D.S. Byrne, 'Urban Consciousness: A Longer Look at the Politics of
Reproduction', paper presented to the Institute of British Geographers Annual
Conference, Hull, January 1978.
19. S. Schifferes, 'Council Housing in the Inter-war Years', paper presented
to the Conference of Socialist Economists Housing Group, 1975.
20. A Policy for the Slums. Report of a special committee of the National
Housing and Town Planning Council, London, P.S. King and Son, 1929, 16,
quoted in W.F. Smith, op.cit.
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Boddy and Gray: Filtering Theory
53
21. Housing Policy: A Consultative Document, (London, HMSO, 1977),
with a Technical Volume in three parts. See, however, part 11,47, on chains of
sales.
22. Department of the Environment, Innner London's Policies for Dispersal
and Balance. Final Report of the Lambeth Inner Area Study, (London, HMSO, 135.
23. Building Societies Association, Evidence Submitted by the BSA to the
Housing Finance Review, (London, 1976), II.
24. Building Societies Association, Building Society Affairs 87, (July 1976),
4, and Building Society Affairs, 84 (October 1975),1-2.
25. Building Societies AssoCiation, Building Society Affairs 84 (October
1975),4.
26. Building Societies Association, op.cit, 1976, 18.
27. Ibid, 12.
28. Ibid, 18.
29. Ibid, 12.
30. See the discussion of B.T. Robson, 'A View on the Urban Scene' in M.
Chisholm and G. Manners (eds), Studies in Human' Geography, (London,
Heinemann), 203-41, 227-29.
31. E.M. Fisher and R.U. Ratcliff, European Housing Policy and Practice,
Washington, Federal Housing Administration, 1936. Summarised in W.F. Smith,
op.cit.
32. I.S. Lowry, op.cit, 344-45.
33. G. Green and P. R. Williams, 'Some Aspects of Building Society Finance',
paper presented to the Conference of Socialist Economists Housing Group,
(London, 1977), 2-3.
34. W. G. Grigsby and
1.
Rosenburg, Urban Housing Policy, (New York, APS
Publications, Inc. 1975), 196. Both in this and in his earlier book, Housing
Markets and Public Policy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1963,
Grigsby is more aware of the restricted validity of filtering theory in policy terms
than a number of other American authors.
35. R. U. Ratcliff, op.cit., 333-34.
36. G. Sands, 'Housing Turnover: Assessing its Relevance to Public Policy',
American Institute of Planners Journal, (October 1976),419-26,420
37. J. B. Lansing, C. V. Clifton and 1. N. Morgan, New Homes and Poor
People, (Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan Institute for Social
Research 1969). See also the earlier, though small scale, study by F. S. Kristof,
'Housing Policy Goals and the Turnover of Housing', American Institute of
Planners Journal, XXXI, 3, (August 1965),232-45.
38. Ibid, 425.
39. H. C. White, 'Multipliers, Vacancy Chains, and Filtering in Housing',
American Institute of Planners Journal, (March 1971) 88-94.
40. A. Murie, P. Hillyard, D. Birrell, D. Roche, New Building and Housing
Need, Progress in Planning 6.2, (London Pergamon, 1976),90.
41. G. Sands, op.cit., 421.
42. Ibid,425.
43. Ibid,422.
44. C. J. Watson,op.cit., 53.
45. A. Murie et aI, op.cit., 155.
46. C. J. Watson, op.cit., 60.
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Policy and Politics
47. More than Shelter: Social Needs in Low and Moderate-Income Housing.
Prepared by George Scherner Associates for the National Commission on Urban
Problems. Research Report 8, Washington D.C., 1968, vii.
48. A. Murie et aI, op.cit., 91.
49. See F. Gray, 'Selection and Allocation in Council Housing', Institute of
British Geographers Transactions, N.S. 1.1, 1976, 34-36; and M.J. Boddy, 'The
Structure of Mortgage Finance: Building Societies and the British Social
Formation', 58-71 of the same publication.
50. See Political Economy and the Housing Question, (London, Conference
of Socialist Economists, 1975); Housing and Class in Britain, (London,
Conference of Socialist Economists, 1976); Profit Against Houses, (London,
National Community Development Project, 1976); for the USA see D. Harvey,
'The Political Economy of Urbanisation in Advanced Capitalist Societies: the Case
of the United States', G. Gappert and H.M. Rose (eds), The Social Economy of
Cities, (Sage, London and California, 1975), 119-63; and D. Harvey, 'Class
Monopoly Rent, Finance Capital and the Urban Revolution', Regional Studies,
8 (1974),239-55.
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