No matter which definition of affordable housing you adopt, there is no doubt that there isn’t enough of it, particularly for low and middle income households; one in five families now claim housing benefit as rents increasingly exceed incomes and as demand increasingly exceeds supply 2 . 1 . Around 195,000 to 290,000 new homes are required each year to keep pace with demand, yet since 1990, at its highest rate, new supply has only achieved 176,650 a year and in 2010-11 only 116,000 new homes were built Aside from an increasing housing benefit bill, there are many other important costs and consequences that result from a lack of affordable housing, indeed underinvestment in housing creates costs for non housing services, as overcrowded homes can be a detriment to educational performance, crime increases in poorly designed and marginalized environments and transaction and production costs increase and regional economies suffer as essential, low paid workers are displaced from centres of economic activity. Indeed, both an inclusive and civilized society and our economic and social wellbeing are dependent on a balanced housing market that provides ample supply, quality and choice of affordable homes, in well designed and sustainable communities . The lack of affordable housing results from a combination of factors; significant reductions in the object subsidies available to the social housing sector and an increase in subject subsidies is one of these. Statistics regarding completions by the social housing sector during periods of low and high grant funding speak for themselves: around fifteen thousand per year in low periods and around twenty-five to thirty thousand in high periods.