There weren't housing shortages in most Northern cities in the 1980s. Significant deindustrialisation had hollowed them out and they were in economic decline. The population in Manchester dropped continuously from 766,311 in 1931 to 392,819 in 2001 before starting to recover[0].

This was also before the sell-off of council housing, so it was still possible for the authority to guarantee housing. So conservation of unloved but historically important buildings was probably a more pressing problem than finding some vacant land to build flats.

https://www.manchester.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/25393/a2...