In summer 1973 I went to work at the Shelter Housing Aid Centre (SHAC), a London-wide housing project led by the inspirational Father Paul Byrne. SHAC had emerged from the pioneering work of the Catholic Housing Aid Society, which aimed to help families facing housing problems to secure the most appropriate solution. At the time the housing market was dominated by three tenures – two expanding and one in apparently terminal decline. Access to the two growing tenures, owner-occupation and council housing, was tightly controlled by lending or letting criteria, operated, respectively, by building societies and banks on the one hand, and by local authorities on the other, with the two sectors operating in almost total isolation from each other. Access to the declining private rented sector was more open, but conditions were often poor, exploitation was rife and the tenure was seen as an option of last resort.

In this context, SHAC’s aim was to assist individuals and families to find whatever solution was best for them, rather than checking whether they met the criteria for access to just one specific tenure. It was a people-focused service, exploring whatever options might be available and appropriate to the family concerned and acting when necessary as their advocate. So, its work included:

• • innovative schemes to help middle- to low-income households access homeownership;

• • help in securing New Town housing for those willing and able to move;

• • referrals to the emerging new wave of housing associations beginning to make an impact in some of London’s most disadvantaged areas;

• • intervention to secure improvements in insanitary premises;

• • help and advocacy for tenants threatened with eviction or harassment;

• • advocacy with local authorities on behalf of applicants whose needs might not have been fully assessed; and

• • action to help homeless people get a roof over their heads.

The fact that SHAC was able to provide such a comprehensive service was due to the successful fundraising of Shelter, which had been launched in 1966 and had rapidly achieved a high profile by exposing the extent of housing deprivation and homelessness in a supposedly affluent society.