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Return of the slumlords
In the fifth part of his features mini-series GLYN ROBBINS examines how decades of underinvestment in council homes has led to a massive rise in private renting

In 1918, 90 per cent of the UK population were private tenants, but the squalid legacy of the Victorian industrial city was not "fit for heroes."

The 1919 Addison Act encouraged councils to build more homes and with the spectre of Bolshevism haunting the ruling class, the country began a 60-year rejection of slumlords.

By the 1960s private renting had fallen by two-thirds and by the '80s it was only 10 per cent of the housing stock, where it hovered for the next two decades.

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