"Council housing" denotes a sort of basic utility housing. But a typical council house was (a) a house fit for a family; (b) usually had a small garden; (c) was

"Council housing" denotes a sort of basic utility housing. But a typical council house was (a) a house fit for a family; (b) usually had a small garden; (c) was good enough that there was a lively market in them during the Thatcher years. Also, council housing wasn't all concentrated in one place; typically you'd get a block of council houses embedded in a neighbourhood, which might be poor or prosperous. Basically the load was spread around. The neighbourhoods that I like least are where a large-scale greenfield estate was built on the outskirts of a town, far from the centre and the shops. These estates were typically under-equipped with pubs and shops (but they had schools). We don't build council houses any more, since laws were introduced requiring councils to sell such houses to their tenants at a discount. The closest thing now is housing coops, which buy and do-up individual houses. Coops don't build estates.