Location: London
Year: 2023
In a speech to the National Housing Federation in 2018, then UK prime minister Theresa May stated that the "rise of social housing in this country provided what has been called the biggest collective leap in living standards in British history." Her pledge to build on that "more than a century of history, and [carry] forward the torch of high-quality, affordable housing for generations to come" was, however, only very modestly fulfilled, not least because those "affordable" homes so often proved to be unaffordable to those who needed them most. In 2020/21, just 6,586 new social rent homes were completed in England; in the same year, 9,319 were lost to Right-to-Buy. There are now approximately 1.4 million fewer social rent homes than at peak in 1980. Of those former council homes acquired over the years under Right-to-Buy, around 40% are now in the private rental sector; some are rented back from private landlords by local authorities desperate to house at least a few of the 1.2 million households on social housing waiting lists. We are in the midst of a housing crisis.
John Boughton, A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates. London: RIBA Publishing, 2023.