What is social housing?
Social housing is accommodation provided by either a council or a housing association at a reduced rent which should be less than an equivalent privately rented property. Social housing exists in order to help anyone who cannot afford to rent or buy a home.
Homes provided for the financially struggling or elderly have been in existence since medieval times in the form of charitable homes or almshouses, some of which are still inhabited today. Throughout the Victorian era, philanthropic business owners would often provide housing and sometimes entire residential areas for their workers, creating the blueprint of the housing associations that still exist today.
In the 20th century, the impact and aftermath of the world wars highlighted the need for secure homes for everyone, despite income or wealth. The responsibility for this was placed on local councils, and by the 1950s, an average of 147,000 social housing properties were being built throughout the UK every year. [1]
The social housing situation began to change by the 1980s with the introduction of the right to buy, which reduced the number of properties considerably. Housing associations continued to build more homes until 2010 when the government stopped the funding for building new social housing altogether. In 2011, around 36,000 new social housing properties were built, the next year, this had dramatically reduced to only 3000 new homes. This has contributed to a social housing crisis in the UK as the cost of living increases, private rents become unaffordable and many people cannot afford to get onto the property ladder. The National Housing Federation and Crisis have undertaken research [2] that shows the UK is only building 5000 new social housing properties every year, rather than the 90,000 it needs.
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Resources:
[1] https://www.housing.org.uk/about-housing-associations/about-social-housing/