Continuity and change in philanthropic housing organisations: the Octavia Hill Housing Trust and the Guinness Trust.

AbstractIn the last twenty five years housing associations have come to play a greater part in accommodating Londoners than in other parts of the country. In the nineteenth century, too, various forms of philanthropic and semi-philanthropic housing organisations were concentrated in London. This paper is concerned with the nature of the putative links between these Victorian housing organisations and modern housing associations. Much has been written about housing reform in London in the nineteenth century, and the origins of housing associations are generally seen to lie in the Victorian period, but the existing literature tends to take for granted the links between them rather than making them explicit. In fact very few of today's active housing associations can trace their origins directly back to before the First World War. Two such organisations are the Guinness Trust and the Octavia Hill Housing Trust, each of which represents a distinct tradition in voluntary housing. The paper draws on detailed ar...