Attacking the dampness plague: Glasgow's response

Abstract

The city of Glasgow, long renowned throughout Europe for its atrocious tenemental slums, has now inherited a new housing problem: dampness. This is the main conclusion to be drawn from the recently published Glasgow house condition survey (City of Glasgow District Council, 1987). The survey also highlighted the fact that this problem is heavily, but not exclusively, concentrated within the housing stock owned and managed by the local authority. Ironically, council housing, the city's way to alleviate slum conditions, has become the new housing problem. It is doubly ironic that this has happened when a highly successful renovation programme is tackling the last remnants of the slum problem. This article looks at the scale of Glasgow's dampness problem and outlines the various factors that contribute and add to it. A brief description of how the Glasgow District Council intends to tackle the issue is then outlined. A discussion follows of a number of major political and economic factors; they require consideration as they militate against the District Council's strategy. The author's conclusion is that the health and housing issue provides a very strong argument to challenge these political and economic factors. Just as the slum clearance and renovation programme was promoted primarily on the issue of improving the individual's health, the same argument must be resurrected to fight dampness