Shelter’s ‘Safe as Houses: Why Investment in Social Housing is Great for Us and Our Economy’
UK charity Shelter, with a new publication making the economic case for social housing—to add to the ethical, social, cultural and environmental cases
You never really need an excuse to be in London but last week I had several anyway. One of them was attend the launch of Shelter’s publication Safe as Houses: Why Investment in Social Housing is Great for Us and Our Economy.
“Ahead of the Spending Review in June, Shelter has brought together some of this country’s leading economists, industry figures, and policy experts to set out the economic and fiscal case for investing in social homes. These essays include rigorous analyses of how the housing emergency is damaging our economy and offer unique insights into how social housing stimulates productive investment and an efficient labour market.”
In holding the launch next to Houses of Parliament, it almost felt like we were collectively attempting to catapult some coherent thinking about housing into the heart of government. It’s an excellent publication, with an essay from my colleague Mariana Mazzucato kicking it off, comprising extracts from the two pieces that Mariana wrote for Council on Urban Initiatives: The right to housing: A mission–oriented and human rights-based approach written with Leilani Farha, and Modern Housing: An environmental common good written with me.
Other contributions are from Kenneth Gibb, Ann Pettifor, John Muellbauer, Susan Newman, Katie Randall/Hannah Williamson, Adam Yousef, Sir Michael Marmot/Jessica Allen/Jamaica Norferini/Michael Alexander, Glen Bramley, Anne Power, and Shelter’s Policy and Research teams. It’s a great set, covering the numerous benefits of good-quality social housing, across various forms of economic value, as well as the more direct outcomes of social, health and environmental value.
As Shelter established recently, this would produce greater economic value (effectively, a profit) than not investing in social housing.
“We commissioned research with the National Housing Federation showing that building 90,000 social homes would add £51.2 billion to the economy. Building these homes would support almost 140,000 jobs — and the initial costs would be paid back within 11 years. Over a 30-year period, building 90,000 social homes results in a £12 billion profit for the taxpayer.” —Shelter
That finding builds on previous research from UCL that “building more social and affordable housing could save UK government £1.5 billion a year”. Building public housing is not a cost, but an investment.
The launch event had two great panel discussions, featuring too many to mention, but I’ll call out Kenneth Gibb of Glasgow’s UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, who spoke great sense and clarity; former Arup colleague Becci Taylor, who was one of few who picked up the environmental aspects of providing good housing), Adam Yousef (Greater London Authority), and perhaps particularly the powerful contribution of Florence Eshalomi, MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green.
The publication was preceded by an open letter to the UK Chancellor, coordinated by Shelter and signed by forty of us—including UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose colleagues Mariana, Carlota Perez, Josh Ryan-Collins—and calling for greater investment in social housing (also, possibly the first, and last, time I’ve been called an economist).
You can read the letter here—and in fact you can add your name to the accompanying online petition, which aims to get 20,000 signatories.
Adam Yousef’s piece unpacks the challenges London faces in particular, though this is a national challenge across the UK, clearly, the outcome of financialising housing as speculative asset class rather than a home, a common good infrastructure. Marmot et al’s essay points out the tight relationship between “good housing … health and health equity, as well as the sustainability of the NHS”, indicating the need for systemic approaches to policymaking, beyond the traditional governance silos that separate health, housing, and planning.
I also particularly appreciate the clarity of Shelter Policy Officer Sam Bloomer’s line, “Unlike private housebuilding which can falter and fail to deliver wider socioeconomic benefits, social housing investment guarantees the delivery of the homes we actually need.” That is akin to the direction I took with our recent Australian Reduction Roadmap work: given a very real, diminishing emissions budget that we have to work with, we should focus new-build on the gap in housing markets such as UK and Australia. Given we have an over-supply of privately-owned housing space, our remaining emissions budget should perhaps only be ‘spent’ on public housing and community-led housing. These are the only tenure types that can guarantee affordability, being outside of financialised housing models, whilst public leadership and procurement power allows them to drive innovation in circular materials, effective fabrication, low-energy operations, and design quality. More on that here. This social justice outcome, arrived at from a different direction of climate justice, echoes Bloomer’s line about “delivery of the homes we actually need”.
Do download Shelter’s Safe as Houses publication, and please consider supporting their campaigns and policy work.
For more on housing, read Modern Housing An environmental common good, by Dan Hill and Mariana Mazzucato (2024):
See also, an Australian Reduction Roadmap (2025):
