Heroine

It’s 170 years since the birth of Octavia Hill. Philanthropist, property manager, social reformer and artist. The ‘Florence Nightingale’ of landlords and property managers. A good time to remember that very little of what we are trying to do in property now is new.

Octavia Hill came from a wealthy family of active social reformers. As a girl she helped her mother to run workshops for poor children making dolls’ house furniture. Her father lost his money during the big recession of the early 1840s but when she was 26 Octavia was able to put together financial backing for her first property management project.

She borrowed money to buy some slum properties and began to manage them directly herself with an emphasis on improving the conditions and the financial viability of the properties. Her friend John Ruskin then paid £750 for three houses for sale in Paradise Place, Marylebone and asked Octavia to manage them on condition that they were managed on a 5% return on his capital investment. Ruskin did not need the money, his purpose was to encourage others to invest in housing for the working class. Octavia found herself managing three stinking run down tenements ‘bursting at the seams with roughs and rowdies.’ She was very good at it. A combination of extending and refurbishing the accommodation, regular maintenance and cleaning, and weekly visiting (both to collect rent and work where necessary with the tenants) led to the successful operation of the scheme. Once the 5% return was achieved, any surplus could be spent by the tenants on projects such as a playground or an ‘outdoor sitting room.’

She had a very clear view on the relationship between landlord and tenant. The tenant must pay the rent without fail (or the 5% return was not achievable) and the landlord was morally obliged to keep the property in good repair. Her strict approach has been criticised as inflexible; she did not tolerate bad payers or anti social behaviour and her army of volunteers and workers (her ‘visitors’) immersed themselves in tackling worklessness and household debt among the people who lived in her developments. This paid off and bears a close resemblance to present day housing policy on the encouragement of greater economic independence and social mobility among tenants.

She used the same model over and over again. She was offered the management of more and more properties and by 1874 she was managing 15 housing schemes with around 3000 tenants. Those who invested in her housing projects would see a 5% return on their capital and tenants had to pay their way. She insisted that the only constraint on her work was a shortage of the right people and not lack of money. She held a list of donors waiting to buy houses for her to manage and when she found the right property and the right person to manage it she would put them together. The full extent of her portfolio is not recorded but by the time of her death in 1912 some estimate that she was managing 20,000 dwellings, the equivalent to a large housing association today.

She took on the management of larger blocks of flats, accepting them as necessary in an urban area. She was actually very critical of their design and argued that they were prone to problems in their common parts, not necessarily cheaper to construct or to maintain, difficult to manage and often ugly and uninteresting to look at. No doubt she would have had a lot to say about new build blocks in city centres today.

Her essays and letters, especially Four years’ Management of a London Court 1869 edited by Robert Whelan from p.51 give further insight on her work and thoughts.

She argued vehemently for the development of public open space and gardens. Indefatigable, she was one of the founders of the National Trust.

The Octavia Hill Museum in Wisbech was refurbished earlier this year. It’s closed now until next March but it’s worth a visit if you want to see what Octavia was up against in the day to day management of a Victorian slum, giant bed bugs and all.