The state must invest in, not subsidise, housing.

While some commentators were quick to write off Zack Polanski’s speech at the Green Party conference as merely vague pandering, there were some important things mentioned, particularly around housing. Polanski stated that, in tandem with a rent freeze, the Government should be using housing benefit, including £13.4 billion towards supporting private renters, to build social homes instead. Though just a single line, this reasoning speaks to a wider alternative desperately needed to solve Britain’s housing crisis, an alternative that British politics at large is yet to seriously consider.

Crossing the aisle, despite the overwhelming attention given to Andy Burnham’s bold and widely praised speech at the Labour Party conference, one area that remains lacking in concrete solutions is housing. Burnham came into power promising a council housebuilding revolution. The actual measures are notably more muted. Burnham has backtracked on his original pledge to solely dedicate the government’s £39 billion affordable homes programme to social homes. Shelter has additionally warned that the initial 70,000 social homes now promised will fall far short of supplying the 1.3 million households on a waitlist for housing. Furthermore, rather than the state intervening directly, Burnham has shifted the responsibility onto housing associations, meaning higher costs and less efficiency in constructing at scale. This is on top of Burnham’s recent introduction of first-time buyer loans, a policy previously implemented by Conservative governments that has only inflated housing prices, rather than bringing them down, and further ladens people with debt. 

All this, alongside Polanski’s remark, speaks to the central problem around our housing crisis. The state is subsidising housing, not investing in it. The abdication of the British state from housing, beginning under Thatcher, has been all but disastrous for the housing stock. Councils and the Government are paying landlords for homes which were previously under public ownership. Private rents are eating up an average of 36% of monthly incomes in England, during a cost-of-living crisis. Those who can buy a home outright do so only under significant and debilitating debt. Developers are often subsidised to build new homes, who themself have no interest in maintaining affordability. Near-zero levels of new social homes are being built. The problem is only exacerbated by Right to Buy denying the next generation access to existing social homes.

This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if this transfer of wealth was productive, the problem is that this is not the case. Private ownership does not always lead to greater efficiency, better conditions or increased supply. In the case of housing, it is about profiteering: making additional income from facilitating scarcity and its issues, not resolving it, particularly in the private rental sector. Research from UCL found that if private rents were reduced by even 20%, landlords would still hold pre-tax profit margins 4.5 times bigger than the average British business. Simultaneously, such profit does not translate into better living conditions. Across 252 councils, 436,000 complaints were made over living conditions between 2018 and 2023, and on average, privately rented homes have double the safety violations of social homes. 

The YIMBY movement’s counterargument to this diagnosis is to take a laissez-faire approach; less regulation and more private investment, which, they argue, will lower the average cost of housing. However, there are two problems with this. First, as Grenfell, and, increasingly climate change have demonstrated, removing regulations opens the door to long-term risks, both to tenants’ immediate safety, and through emissions from inefficient homes contributing to climate change. This is the reason the Greens advocate for specific measures like insulating homes. Second, the market cannot replace security and affordability outright, and ultimately, does not care for it. In Austin, which is often cited as the golden child of YIMBYism, construction eventually slowed down once house prices fell too low. This is because the market only operates on the logic of profit, even at the expense of sustained home occupancy for all.

The only tangible solution to the housing crisis is for the state to invest and intervene. The extraction of wealth must be halted through rent controls, an end to subsidies and, most importantly, the abolition of right-to-buy. This makes home management and construction what it should be: a vital public service, not simply a business to make money from tenants and the government. If landlords sell, as a popular counterargument suggests, the state must buy and bring the stock into social housing. More broadly, we must return to the days of consistently constructing social housing. Despite what others will say, it can be done. Before Thatcher, the UK grew its social housing stock by an average of 100,000 homes per year, even with high population growth from the baby boomers and post-war migration. 

It proves that the government can treat housing as a crucial component of the social contract, of societal security, and not merely a commodity. It is also still possible to deliver social homes at scale with strong, future-proof protections. In Stroud and Bristol, even amid the funding crisis among local councils, hundreds of new social homes have been built that prioritise safety and measures to reduce energy emissions. When public service is the primary motive, rather than profit, it allows for the scale and quality that the free market doesn’t always provide.

To give Burnham some credit, allowing councils to seize property left vacant or in poor condition is a step in the right direction. Regardless, we must embrace this logic wholeheartedly. The commodification of housing was a choice, not a necessity. The government has as much authority to reverse the current situation as it does to allow it. The funding, though not infinite, does exist, and if the government redirects its investments strategically, and makes use of tools like rent controls, a true revolution (some might say revival) in housing is possible. This would grant a desperately needed and sustainable solution not only for today, but for all future generations of Britons. The absolute last thing we should do is privatise those assets even further. 

Image: Unsplash/Jacob McGowin

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