It’s unbelievable how many families are forced to rent privately because they can’t secure a social home and have no hope of buying. That’s exactly the situation I was in.
I spent over a decade privately renting a cottage for myself and my daughter. Every month was a struggle to cover the rent. I felt a lot of shame about that – like I was getting something wrong or should be coping better.
For the final few years we lived … Read more
This week, Channel 4 showed the latest film from George Clarke, architect, TV presenter and Shelter ambassador. George Clarke’s Council Housing Scandal is a rallying cry for everyone who believes Britain desperately needs more social housing.
At its core, the documentary is an indictment of the terrible state of housing in this country. Clarke visits people living in temporary accommodation and sees the awful conditions they are forced to live in. He’s visibly moved by families forced into cramped flats … Read more
It’s obvious that there is no solution to our housing emergency that doesn’t include many more social homes. Homes with secure tenancies and genuinely affordable rents pegged to local incomes, with enough space for children to play and do homework, and for adults to live with dignity. On its own, market housing – that is private housing for rent or sale – simply cannot provide a home for everyone who needs one without compromising standards in unacceptable ways.
100 … Read more
Lloyd George never promised ‘Homes for Heroes’, and the 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act didn’t create the first ‘council’ housing. But, those two common misconceptions aside, it’s been a pleasure to see Christopher Addison’s flagship reform so widely celebrated on its centenary. And with good reason: 100 years on, there’s an urgent need to see a commitment to large-scale social housebuilding that matches the ambitions of 1919, to provide homes people desperately need.
My … Read more
Dear Prime Minister,
You have arrived in office in the middle of a housing emergency. Almost 280,000 people are homeless in England, including 123,000 children. Half of young people have no chance of ever buying a home, and millions are trapped in expensive and unstable private renting.
Clearly this emergency is crying out for some sort of ‘DUDE’ moment of its own.
Your predecessor took a vital step towards improving the lives of England’s 11 million private renters when she … Read more
My name is Georgina, I’m 28 years old and I’m a secondary school maths teacher. I live with my three year old son in a one bedroom flat.
Oliver is a very playful, inquisitive, boisterous toddler, who has a real zest for life. He loves being outdoors. He has a real love of learning. He’s fantastic, he’s my little boy.
Oliver was diagnosed with a brain tumour 18 months ago. He has chemotherapy treatment every Monday.
I’m privately renting our … Read more
Years from now, when the history of Theresa May’s record on housing is written, it will remain impossible to ignore the fire at Grenfell Tower.
Few events change the course of debate the way this did. In the two years since the fire, the public discourse on social housing has made a profound and welcome turn. But meaningful changes in policy have been much slower to come.
Today, people living in social housing are still being failed by poor regulation … Read more
Building social housing is the only effective, long-term cure for the housing crisis. That’s why last week we joined with the National Housing Federation, Crisis, the Chartered Institute for Housing and the Campaign to Protect Rural England to fight for the homes we need: a funded programme of 150,000 social and affordable homes a year. From this Saturday, Shelter will be taking to the streets to ask you to add your support to our campaign, starting with our first … Read more
Almost everywhere in the country, the cost of the land needed to build a house is more than the cost of actually building it. And it shows.
Our speculative approach to development means that a bidding war is now the normal way to acquire land. The race to the top when it comes to buying a site perversely creates a race to the bottom when it comes to the end product.
Very little … Read more
The start of this month saw the publication of Land for the Many, a landmark report commissioned by the Labour Party and edited by George Monbiot. It gives a thorough account of the role of land in creating many of the problems Corbyn’s Labour has firmly in its sights – poverty, inequality, the climate crisis and unaffordable housing – and puts forward a huge range of solutions. Among them is a recommendation to reform the Land Compensation Act … Read more
The next Prime Minister must put social housing at the heart of their solution to our housing emergency. The scale of the crisis demands serious ambition to build enough social homes for all who need them. But it’s not just a numbers game. As Shelter’s new Grounds for Change essay collection argues, alongside investment the government must learn from history and take action to reform our broken land laws. Only then will we build the high-quality, well-designed, genuinely affordable homes … Read more
On Friday 14 June, Britain will pause at 11am to hold a minute’s silence in remembrance of the 72 lives lost during the Grenfell Tower fire on this day two years ago.
During this moment of reflection, I hope you’ll be joining me and hundreds of thousands of people from across the country as we take time to pause and remember the community affected by the fire.
But this also serves to remind ourselves that there’s still important work to be done.
Like many other organisations, we’ve been … Read more