Market solutions for social problems: working-class housing in nineteenth-century London

This article shows how model dwellings companies were able to offer a solut ion to the 'housing problem' by profitably providing decent working-class a ccommodation in nineteenth-century London. Despite their success, a conjunc ture of economic circumstances, ideological change, and public crowding-out led to the marginalization of model dwellings companies. This experiment t o provide a market solution to a social problem represents a nineteenth-cen tury form of ethical investment which has not been accommodated within the historiography of the development of the welfare state.