What caused London’s housing crisis, and how do we fix it?
Bartlett academics are delivering the evidence base and strategies to tackle London’s housing crisis
Despite the promises of a ‘golden era’ of social housing, there’s little chance the 31,000 social rented homes required annually to meet demand in London will be built, either this year or next.
For Londoners trapped in the most profound housing crisis the capital has ever seen, the price of this failure is high – and still rising. On average, renting a one-bedroom flat costs 46% of the gross-median pay in the capital. Recent figures show that 60% of London’s renters live in unacceptable conditions, including vermin-infested, damp or dangerous homes.
As of last year, there were 183,000 homeless Londoners (a disproportionate number of whom are single women with dependent children). And the costs of this homelessness are massive.
Not just the £6.5 billion spent in the UK every year on temporary accommodation, additional healthcare, criminal justice and social services (£1.74 billion of which is spent in London alone). The human costs for individuals include a higher risk of HIV, Hepatitis C, falls and other accidents, poorer nutritional intake, and a mortality rate six times higher than those with secure homes. Homeless children are twice as likely to suffer physical abuse.
So, why is this happening?
The diminishing returns of cross-subsidy
“The chronic shortage of genuinely affordable housing is a political failure that's been driven by decades of policy decisions,” says Dr Joe Penny, Associate Professor at the UCL Urban Laboratory.
Joe’s report, ‘The promise of cross-subsidy: Why estate demolition cannot solve London’s housing emergency’, pinpoints how this political and economic focus during the 1980s and 90s on private market housing went hand-in-hand with a corresponding disinvestment in social housing.
This was enabled, in part, by the cultural shift in perceptions of social housing around the same time. Council estates were increasingly depicted by both the media and the political establishment as deprived places, badly designed and steeped in low aspirations and antisocial behaviour.
Commissioned by the Public Interest Law Centre, Joe’s report examines the present-day consequences of this legacy through a series of six in-depth case studies. The report analyses the three main models (developer-led, local housing company and council-led) of cross-subsidy housebuilding – a strategy where high-priced new homes (market-rate housing) are built on public land to fund "affordable" housing on the same site.
The findings are damning. Of the 23,551 homes these six projects will deliver, the majority are for market rent or sale. Only 6,478 are a direct replacement for the social rented homes knocked down – which means London suffers a net loss of 2,151 truly affordable homes.
Only one (council-led) project provided a net increase in genuinely affordable homes, but these saddled tenants with a rent increase of £216 per month. The increased rent for the regenerated ‘affordable’ homes created under the developer-led or housing association models was more than £400 per month.
Do these existing homes always need to be replaced? Joe thinks not.
“Often, there’s not a structural problem with these existing homes. And if the issues are of disinvestment, things like damp and mould, those issues are a landlord’s management problem.
They shouldn’t be dealt with by demolishing someone’s home and moving them out for five or six years. That’s a huge disruption to people’s communities, their social relationships and networks.”
In recent years, social housing tenants have gained greater control over how their homes are redeveloped, but they’re still struggling to be heard.
“The 2018 introduction of estate ballots was a really significant step, which came as a result of local campaigners and housing activists, as well as the impact of Grenfell.
“However, there are still issues. The ballot doesn’t always offer a fair choice – it's often ‘redevelopment or nothing’.
“There are also finance issues and spiralling costs which make it very difficult for councils to make firm promises to tenants.”
“Things like damp and mould ...
shouldn’t be dealt with by demolishing someone’s home and moving them out for five or six years. That’s a huge disruption to people’s communities, their social relationships and networks.”
Dr Joe Penny, UCL Urban Laboratory
Designing better possibilities for British housing
So what kind of alternatives should be on the ballot? Professor Murray Fraser, from the Bartlett School of Architecture, has some ideas.
Murray’s co-authored report, ‘Design For All – A Place To Call Home’, is also an in-depth exploration of the housing crisis. But where Joe’s report offers the historical and economic context, along with a critical analysis of current approaches to estate regeneration, Murray’s report takes a broader approach.
Murray worked with UCL health researchers, including Professors Elena Pizzo and Rosalind Raine, to investigate the health, social and economic impacts of homelessness and precarious housing – some of their findings are included above.
Murray also worked with Dr Nicholas Jewell to develop strategies for affordable and sustainable UK housing, distilled into a set of 12 recommendations that sets out how we can tackle the crisis at both the local and national level.
These include ending the longstanding ‘Right-to-Buy’ scheme, which has decimated English social housing stock and discourages local authorities from building new homes; incentivising retrofit projects by exempting their construction costs from VAT; and giving local authorities more agency and financial control of their housing projects.
The report also lays out specific design approaches to help reduce operational carbon and alleviate fuel poverty, and the infrastructure and regulatory measures that the construction industry would need to apply these approaches more widely.
“These things are possible,” says Murray. “There have been better times and better models.”
“I’m an architectural historian as well as an architect. And there’s a lot of evidence, both historic and current, that you can generate plentiful, good quality housing under different political conditions.
“Belfast in the early 20th century had an amazing oversupply of working-class housing – because it suited the British government at the time for specific reasons. In the modern era, Vienna is setting a marvellous example of how to provide social housing.”
Joe concurs, adding, “We’ve got this political consensus now that we need to build more housing – and the current idea from government is to use the private sector to do that.
“But when private developers are leading the process, their only focus – in fact, their fiduciary duty to their shareholders – is to minimise social housing as much as possible, to get the maximum market value out of the land.
“The only way you can square it is through some sort of government intervention.”
“These things are possible. There have been better times and better models.”
Professor Murray Fraser, The Bartlett School of Architecture
Duncombe Barracks, York. Mikhail Riches Architects, set to the be the UK’s largest Passivhaus and net-zero carbon scheme.
Duncombe Barracks, York. Mikhail Riches Architects, set to the be the UK’s largest Passivhaus and net-zero carbon scheme.
Making the case for a fairer future
These two reports, combined, provide a detailed exploration of the causes, mechanisms and potential solutions to the UK’s housing crisis.
Murray is realistic about the impact their work will have on government policy.
“Progress is always slow when it comes to housing matters. However, there are some positive signs from the current government around local authority housebuilding, and the erosion of Right-to-Buy.”
Joe’s report was commissioned by the Public Interest Law Centre for a different purpose and audience.
“It might not have a direct impact on policy. It was written to create an evidence base for housing activists, campaigners and tenants to point to and say, ‘these numbers prove that this particular form of redevelopment isn’t going to be good for our estate.”
“It’s still early days, but we’ve done a lot of workshops with housing tenants. We’ve also created this accessible guide to challenging estate demolition plans with hard facts.”
Despite the political barriers, Joe and Murray remain hopeful.
Murray says, “Britain already has the expertise and design quality to create healthy, sustainable housing for lower incomes. All that’s needed is appropriate funding, and the political will to make it happen.”
Joe adds, “That, for me, is the good news – because political will is something that people have some level of control over. We know how to do this. It’s just about tackling a certain number of vested interests to make it happen.”
About the authors
Professor Murray Fraser
Professor of Architecture and Global Culture, The Bartlett School of Architecture
Murray Fraser is an architect and academic, and was appointed Professor of Architecture and Global Culture in 2011. He served as the Faculty Vice Dean of Research from 2012–19. In 2018, he received the RIBA Annie Spink Award, recognising outstanding contributions to architectural education and leadership internationally.
Dr Joe Penny
Associate Professor, UCL Urban Laboratory
Dr Joe Penny is Associate Professor in Global Urbanism at the UCL Urban Laboratory. Since 2013, he has been conducting conjunctural research into London’s spatio-political transformations in the context of austerity urbanism, financialization and rentierism. His research sits between urban political economy, critical urban planning studies, and economic and social geography.
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