The scale and complexity of England’s housing crisis is stark, and the need for social homes is greater than ever. Almost 1.3 million households are currently waiting for a home. In the meantime, local authorities across England spent £1.24 billion in the year up to March 2023 on reducing homelessness, including temporary accommodation.
There is a clear financial and moral imperative to drive change.
Public sector provision is the only way to build social housing at the scale we need to meet the challenge we are facing.
To address this, our report, Foundations for the Future, outlines an economic model which will contribute to meeting social housing need.
The model proposes using land which is free at the point of use to build mixed-tenure developments of social and market homes. As the land cost is eliminated or substantially reduced, the cost of delivery is driven down. When a proportion of the homes are sold on the open market, and all revenue is retained and reinvested, we can build more social homes at a lower net cost. While at some stage the amount of suitable publicly-owned land will be exhausted, this is some way off yet.
We urge the government to:
- pilot the model to deliver urgently needed social and market housing
- collaborate with the housing sector to refine and expand this model for increased social housing delivery and
- explore ways for local authorities to retain and reinvest proceeds from sales of public housing stock.
Download the PDF document (2.7MB) below or read the full online version.
