Good housing needs more than good housing policy: housing policy needs to be part of wider social changes towards a more equal, community-centred, environmentally sustainable society, but good housing policy can make an important contribution to those changes. Economic considerations remain key, but we need to transcend the destructive veneration of GDP.

This paper outlines a radically different approach to housing policy. It also looks at immediate improvements that will be steps on the way to more fundamental transformation.

The United Kingdom’s housing policies have been ideologically-driven, and have led to the current crisis of strangled investment, under-provision and a general flow of power and money from civic society to the wealthy. UK housing has suffered greatly from its politicians’ fixation with a single form of home and tenure, the mortgage-backed and privately-owned home.