Housing: An Anarchist Approach is a collection of essays and speeches written by Colin Ward in the course of 20 years. It focuses primarily on housing issues in the United Kingdom, including the role of planners and architects and public housing. He primarily focus on criticizing the Government of the United Kingdom, leaving criticism of capitalism as secondary.[2]: 85–86 At a time, properties owned by landlords was at 10% and the UK was passing through slum clearances and municipalization programs created by the Labour Party. Ward specially criticized the left approach to housing, but also the private landlord model, defending an anarchist approach to the issue. Ward predicted that renting would mostly disappear, but his prediction failed, as the Right to Buy policy from Margaret Thatcher government was yet to take effect and up to 2016 40% of the UK public houses would be bought by landlords.[1]
Ward defends that squatting and housing cooperative movements on Third World countries, specially in Latin America, Africa and Asia, are a better solution to house the poor compared to the UK Council Housing. As examples, he cites the popular housing movements during Salvador Allende government in Chile and the work of John Turner in Peru. As an alternative for UK, he cites the initiative of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) in New York City, where abandoned buildings were renovated by the prospective tenants at a low cost and rented for half the price.[2]: 85–86 He also elaborates on anarchist architecture, citing self-build, DIY culture, informal economy and Local Exchange Trading Systems as essential for the anarchist movement.[3]: 12
