The proud tradition of social housing in the United Kingdom is deeply rooted in the fabric of our society. However, I know from speaking to European friends the perspective is shared.
To varying common degrees financial and regulatory barriers exist, as does a lack of products, subsidy guarantees but also social conditions that have ghettoised estates and neighbourhoods. Reflecting on this it can be easy to call for system reform without remembering often there is no single solution but instead the answer is to understand the key leverage forms in each system. Fundamentally, however we should not forget housing is a foundation of dignity rather than a speculative asset in which social cohesion and wellbeing is enhanced, and rights are maintained.
From the earliest days of the 19th century, philanthropic pioneers laid the foundation for what we now recognise as housing associations — driven not by profit, but by purpose. These were moral and practical responses to industrial squalor, rooted in compassion, community, and faith.
In the wake of the Second World War, we saw the birth of “homes for heroes”, a national commitment to dignity, decency, and rebuilding. And throughout the 20th century, during periods of social upheaval and crisis, social housing has been a vital anchor.
Today, UK housing associations hold a combined asset value of nearly £200 billion. But more than their financial scale, it’s their social value that truly defines them.
And yet, let me be clear, we now face not just a crossroads, but an existential moment.
Over the last three decades, the ground has been shifting beneath us. But what we’re experiencing today is the product of deeper systemic forces — forces that are reshaping our economic, social, and environmental landscape in profound ways.
We are operating against a backdrop of entrenched policy inertia, financial models that were designed for another era, and a legacy of state-backed subsidies that no longer reflect present realities.
Our critical constraints are stark and growing:
- Carbon and climate breakdown - decarbonisation imperatives are placing unprecedented pressure to retrofit existing stock while navigating uncertain landscapes for achieving net-zero goals
- Labour shortages and workforce precarity - workforce shortages, skills mismatches and rising costs
- Economic volatility - inflationary pressures, energy price instability
- Rising inequality - shifting welfare landscape are exacerbating financial precarity
- And declining access to foundational goods, from food and energy to care and shelter systems, essential to the well-being of communities are compounding housing-related vulnerabilities
In a sector long encouraged to chase scale, I want to make the case for something just as, if not more, important: scope.
Because the true role of housing associations today is not simply to grow, but to go deeper.
We are not just landlords but anchor institutions, embedded in place. Our duty is to help stabilise local economies, strengthen community wellbeing, and help weave resilience into the very neighbourhoods we serve. But we can go further using levers of influence to connect transformation within food, energy, care systems to achieve changes in education, climate change resilience, employment and health and social care. Drawing inspiration from Sweden with its place-based missions using the street as levers to create healthy food systems, and Camden, London who are directing carbon-neutral ambitions through local housing estates.
This means:
- Co-creating shared infrastructure for care, enterprise, and community life
- Using our procurement power to support local employment, food security, and distributed energy systems
- Adopting financial models that value not just return on investment, but return on community cohesion, participation, and prevention
Let’s be honest, we are products of decades of siloed systems. Built through a patchwork of funding streams and policies designed for another age. And as a result, people and information have become fragmented, working in isolation rather than in relationship.
This isn’t unique to housing. It’s a consequence of a welfare state, particularly in the UK, that was designed for a very different post-war world. One that no longer matches today’s complexity.
Interestingly, in the United States, multi-service organisations have been a part of the social welfare landscape for over a century, especially since the 1960s War on Poverty. These organisations, spanning housing, health, education, and care, offer one model of holistic service delivery
Here in Wales, we do have a legislative framework that champions integration, principles of collaboration, coordination, and co-production are written into our law. But in practice? They remain at the margins.
And I don’t believe that’s due to a lack of will. More often, it’s about the lack of a shared table, the absence of the right people, from inside and outside government, in the right rooms, at the right time, with the right incentives.
The truth is, we are being asked to meet rising needs with diminishing resources while navigating opaque systems. It is not sustainable. The ask is coming from oversubscribed state and welfare services unable to cope but becoming increasingly adept transferring risk to non-state actors. At Hafod frontline housing teams often double up as pseudo social workers, pseudo police and pseudo job advisors. Moreover, this denotes failure of multiple individual local agencies – housing, general practice, schools, healthcare, a mutually vicious circle. We must urgently find ways to eradicate synthetic structures, pool assets and resources and ways to co-invest and co-finance.
So, what’s needed?
We need to leverage both financial and social capital, not just to survive, but to lead. And we must attract new forms of investment, through meaningful public-private partnerships rooted in trust, transparency, and shared outcomes that lead to information-sharing, policy alignment and co-investment.
Encouragingly, we’re seeing new market entrants, social investment funds, mission-led institutions, stepping up. They understand the volatility of our environment, and they’re building reserves to protect their missions. Unlike institutional investors with a shorter term focus we need those providing long-term patient capital.
But to truly scale impact, we need to solve for the mismatch: between capital and social outcomes. Between investment risk and community value.
That means building better valuation tools, clearer risk frameworks, and more robust models for social return. So often the mismatch between financial investment and social outcome becomes the final hurdle to unlocking new forms of investment. To this end, an example worth exploring is the S14 Framework, funded by the European Commission, trialled successfully in Denmark and Italy, offering a way to align financial value with social outcomes.
Governance?
This issue is important because it is a point of tension between those who subscribe to the notion of democratic pluralism, which melds forces of the market, government and civil society to maintain a dynamic balance amongst competing societal needs, efficient production of goods, services, accountability of power and institutional innovation. This serves well the regulated sector, but not necessarily free markets.
Larry Fink, CEO Blackrock: ‘A Sense of Purpose’ calls for corporate governance to be more ‘purposeful’, so perhaps the tide is changing? From the other perspective, Professor Mazzucato says that not much is changing because change needs to go to the very core of business models and value chains. Both perspectives however agree that Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Social Governance are too limited to achieve transformation. The reality is change only comes about if we all commit to reimagining how to co-create value. This is fundamental if we are not to repeat the perpetual cycle that fuels the debt-driven system and generates speculative bubbles, serving only to boost short-term gains in stock prices.
Now, is there a silver bullet?
No. But if there were, it would lie in the potential of well-established, well-resourced, community benefit organisations to lead, not alone, but in coalition.
This means:
- Becoming truly caring organisations, embedded in whole-system approaches to health and wellbeing
- Prioritising customer-centred innovation, grounded in the lived experience of communities
- Creating and protecting shared spaces - for growing food, exchanging knowledge, playing, learning, and supporting one another
In short, we must go back to the spirit of those early housing pioneers, but do so with 21st-century tools and vision.
Let’s lead with purpose. Let’s rebuild trust. And let’s remember: our greatest asset isn’t bricks and mortar — it’s people.