1. Policy summary

1.1 Tell us what a better future looks like for you and the people you work with

Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home. But right now, we’re not just having to defend that right. We’re fighting for millions currently without a safe home who deserve better.

A safe home is affordable: we all need to be able to afford the rent without having to cut back on food and other essentials.

It’s stable: so you can plan for the future and build a life where you want to live, without the fear of having it all pulled out from under you.

It’s in a good condition: so people are healthy and children have room to grow, without having to fight back damp and disrepair, or live in cramped or overcrowded conditions.

Shelter works with many people every day who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own – they’ve lost income because of the pandemic, they’re fleeing an abusive partner or have been turned away by landlords and letting agents. Without an affordable, stable home to rely on dealing with these things is so much harder.

1.2 What problem are you trying to solve?

It can be hard to comprehend just how big the housing emergency has become for this country. Our new report (Denied the Right to A Safe Home) shows that 17.5 million adults in Britain, or 1 in 3, are now impacted by the housing emergency.

When children are factored into the results, the number affected rises to 22 million. For a third of us, our homes are unsuitable or unaffordable.  This includes: 

• Over 260,000 people who are homeless and living in temporary accommodation – insecure and often overcrowded and run down;
• Over 1 million people on social housing waiting lists, waiting for a social rent home; 
• Thousands of private renters having to put up with damp, mould and unaffordable rents, unable to complain in case they are evicted and failed by our inadequate welfare safety net.  

1 in 7 people have to cut down on essentials like food to pay their rent or mortgage.  

On top of this, already marginalised groups face discrimination in the pursuit of safe home. Landlords and agents in the private rented sector frequently advertise homes as No DSS, meaning they won’t let to anyone claiming benefits – this disproportionately affects women, Black and Bangladeshi families, and disabled people. And around 1.4 million people are impacted the ‘no recourse to public funds policy’ which bars many migrants from accessing homelessness assistance or welfare benefits.

And at the sharpest end of our crisis, where many are cruelly locked out from receiving assistance or aren’t being given the support they need, thousands are pushed into sleeping rough. The mental and physical health impacts of spending even a short amount of time in this situation are huge.

1.3 What is the solution?

There is no silver bullet to the housing emergency. Discrimination and exclusion must be tackled in all parts of society. The private rented sector needs reform. And our welfare safety net is currently not fit for purpose. But we will never truly break the back of our housing emergency without a step change in social housebuilding.
Successive government have failed to deliver the good quality social homes this country needs. In fact, over the last decade we’ve seen a huge net loss in social housing stock, as many more homes have been sold, demolished or converted than have been built.

The result is homelessness, poverty and need – and it’s out of hand. Over one million people are on social housing waiting lists, and hundreds of thousands are homeless. More and more renters live in overcrowded homes because there aren’t enough social homes to let to them. And because we’ve stopped building social housing at scale, we haven’t built enough housing overall to meet demand. This has driven up prices, putting home ownership out of reach for many, and making private renting so unaffordable that almost half of working renters are just one paycheque away from losing their home.

Shelter, alongside leading voices in the homelessness and housing sectors and across parliament, are calling for 90,000 social homes per year to be built right across England. We must rediscover the purpose and value of social housing, and we must invest in it.

Government must be clear that social rent homes are needed, not other so-called ‘affordable housing’ products, and they need to remove limitations and geographical restrictions on their delivery. This investment would deliver the social homes this country needs to tackle the housing emergency and get us closer to world where the right to safe home is guaranteed.

2. Background and evidence

As our latest research shows, the housing emergency and the sheer lack of good quality, genuinely affordable social housing affects millions right across the country. The reach and severity of this emergency are shocking. 17.5 million adults in Britain, or 1 in 3, now live in unsuitable or unaffordable housing.

But it doesn’t affect us all equally. People from marginalised backgrounds are disproportionately affected by the housing emergency. For example, Black people are three times as likely to experience homelessness than others. Just building social housing alone can’t solve every inequality in housing, we need to tackle wider inequalities and discrimination in housing and across society. But social housing is crucial if we’re going to get those hardest hit into a safe home.

3. Solution

3.1 Why do you think your solution will work?

Social housing is affordable, stable and quality controlled. Social rents, pegged to local incomes, are the most affordable rents across the country – at about half the private market rate on average. People in social homes have longer and more secure tenancies. And while not all existing social homes are in good condition, social homes are much more likely to meet the standard for decent housing. A new generation of good quality social rent homes is the only way to ensure the right to a safe home – in the true meaning of the term – is guaranteed.

It’s also tried and tested. For generations, social housing played a vital role in meeting the housing needs of people across the country, giving millions the quality and dignity of life that insecure and unaffordable private renting could not. Rediscovering its purpose and value, learning from mistakes of the past, and investing in a new programme of social house building holds the key to tackling our housing emergency.

3.2 Evidence or data to suggest this policy proposal will be more effective than previous interventions, and supported by stakeholders?

Research shows that other types of homes that the government calls ‘affordable’ are unaffordable to most people they’re aimed at, including shared ownership and First Homes. Because they are so expensive, these attempts to increase home ownership will do nothing for those who are homeless or on the brink of homelessness. Neither will they help most people in the private rented sector, two thirds of whom have no savings, and 45% of whom now rely on housing benefit to pay their rent. Only social housing, where rents are fixed to local incomes, is designed to be affordable to people who need it. Major housing charities and other housing organisations are agreed that we will not solve homelessness without much more social housing.

4. Implementation

Shelter modelled a scenario where the government funded 3.1 million more social homes over 20 years (including 1.27m homes for those who are homeless, in the worst conditions and in ill health, over 691,000 for older renters, and 1.17m for people trapped in unaffordable, insecure private renting). As well as tackling homelessness and the debt and poverty that many in the private rented sector struggle with, this 20-year programme would provide a return on investment in 39 years. Our calculations from 2019 estimate that it would cost £10.7bn a year on average over the 20 years, reduced to £3.8bn when savings in benefits and increased taxes are considered. This doesn’t include the income from rent payments, and even more could be saved if the government also reformed the land system to ensure cheaper land was available for social housebuilding. It’s worth the money, particularly if you compare it with the £21bn spent on housing benefit annually, much of which goes to private landlords to subsidise high private rents for people who would be better off in a low rent social home.