Housing Principles:

We live in a time of crisis: we face an urgent nature and climate emergency, an unacceptable increase in housing stress and homelessness, and increasing health inequality.

The situation for the environment is dire, with one in ten species in England on the brink of extinction and the UK amongst the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global emissions continue to rise, and despite governments and communities around the world taking action, we are still on track for temperatures to increase by more than 1.5°C.

We cannot tackle the climate crisis without similar ambition to meet the natural crisis head-on — the two are inseparable. The climate crisis is driving nature’s decline; the loss of wildlife and habitats leaves us ill-equipped to reduce our emissions and adapt to change. Nature’s incredible ability to trap carbon safely and provide other important benefits is proven, but nature in the UK is in a sorry state and important habitats are damaged and declining. Rapid cuts in our emissions must be matched with determined action to fix our broken ecosystems, so they can help stabilize our climate. We must bring nature back across at least 30% of land and sea by 2030.

At the same time, many communities across England today have acute unmet housing needs. In its final report, published in 2020, Lord Best’s Affordable Housing Commission identified 4.8 million households in England under serious housing stress, representing one in five of all households. This figure includes 1 million low-income households living in the private rented sector and spending more than 40% of their income on rent, and a further 1 million households struggling to meet their mortgage payments, as well as others living in overcrowded conditions or in homes unsuited to their needs.

There has been little improvement since then. In December 2021, Shelter found there were more than 274,000 homeless people in England, including 126,000 children, most of them living in temporary accommodation.

Even when people do have adequate housing, this may not provide the access to nature that everyone should have, with the benefits this brings to health and wellbeing. Evidence shows that access to natural green space is linked to big improvements in both physical and mental health and reduces health inequality, yet one in three people in England has no access to greenspace within 15 15-minute’ walk of home. Furthermore, access to nature in economically deprived areas, and for areas with higher proportions of minority ethnic groups, is deeply unequal. Currently, children who live in deprived areas are nine times less likely to have access to green spaces.

It is time to find a solution that provides the homes people need, where access to nature is standard. Homes should be built in a way that does not make the climate and nature crises worse, but instead actively contributes to reducing climate impacts, helps nature to recover, and tackles health inequalities.

The urgent need to provide homes for millions of people in housing need is beyond doubt. Since 2017, the government has set itself a target of delivering 300,000 net additional homes a year in England by 2025. Not everyone agrees that significant additional house-building, of whatever tenure, is the most important response to unmet housing needs. Evidence shows a growing housing surplus in many places, with new housing outpacing household formation for most regions in England. The problem is one of affordability and how this is defined and understood.

A blanket target of 300,000 new homes per year does not address the mixture of housing type and tenure needed. Nor does it address the needs of low-income renters. In 2019, Shelter identified 3.1 million households in England in need of social housing and called for a 20-year program averaging 155,000 new social rent homes each year.