The UK is in the midst of a housing crisis; the direct result of decades of bad housing policy. Fifty years ago the country had a fairly stable housing system where the need for secure, affordable housing of the middle class was largely met through homeownership, and that of the working class through widely available social housing. But a reliance on the private market to deliver homes since the 1980s, and the loss of millions of social homes over recent decades, has destroyed this system.