In the debate on the King’s Speech last summer, the Prime Minister said that “the fight for trust is the battle that defines our era”. Frightening but true. During my seven years as Chief Executive of Shelter, the catastrophic loss of trust in institutions and experts, the disenchantment and disenfranchisement of so many people, the polarisation of the public discourse, the pandemic of misinformation – all these are now the stuff of nightmares. Yet the basic building blocks of the social contract, of people’s sense of having a stake in the country, are enduring. I have always believed that a safe home is paramount among these, and in those seven years that belief has only strengthened.
Despite a world that is so much more frightening than it was then, we are actually closer to bringing that safe home within the reach of many more people. I am proud of having played any role in that. But also I’m truly afraid that the progress of the last seven years could still slip away. That’s a political choice, and one that still has to be set in stone.
When I joined Shelter in 2017, although we had not yet experienced the loss of innocence that would accompany the pandemic, Trump’s first victory, the world domination of conspiracy and polarisation, my view of the job ahead was fundamentally shaped by that most horrific and unjust of catastrophes, the Grenfell Tower fire. It was a symbol of systemic neglect of the duty to provide a decent home for people on low incomes. It laid bare the lethal consequences of the demonisation of social housing tenants that had pervaded policy, practice and indeed entertainment for decades.
Just a few years earlier, Inside Housing had declared “The Death of Social Housing” on its front cover, and frankly it looked to me as though, instead of resisting that narrative, the entire sector (including Shelter) had accepted defeat.
It seemed urgent to speak truth to power, however unwelcome: to speak with not for the people with the most to lose or gain from housing policy, to translate the appalling stories that colleagues in our frontline services were hearing every day into clear goals and action.
So where are we now? There has been much to celebrate during my time at Shelter: the work of an incredible group of colleagues, with the support of many thousands of campaigners they have mobilised up and down the country.
Housing is back on the agenda and social housing is not a dirty word. It was a core issue of both national and local elections. Mayors were fighting it out to outbid one another on the number of social homes and Labour, the Greens and Liberal Democrats all recognised the importance of social housing in their manifestos. The current government has committed to the biggest increase in social and affordable homes in a generation and has changed local planning rules to include a focus on social rent.
For us at Shelter it started with our Social Housing Commission in 2018, chaired by Reverend Mike Long of the Notting Hill Methodist Church near Grenfell, which brought together a panel of key figures across the political spectrum with grassroots campaigners like Grenfell Tower survivor Edward Daffarn. This was our line in the sand, a defining moment that signalled the need to work together to push for the systemic solution that is the only way to prevent and ultimately end homelessness. The Commission’s report was one of the main foundations of our ten-year strategy launched in 2019, which firmly and proudly put campaigning for social homes at the heart of Shelter’s work for a decade.
It took several years of campaigning with Grenfell United, and later with the family of Awaab Ishak, but in 2023 we finally saw the passing of the landmark Social Housing Regulation Act and the creation of Awaab’s law to ensure social tenants have protection against unhealthy and even life-threatening conditions.
We also took the decision in that strategy to fight for an end to no-fault evictions and give private renters greater security and stronger rights, a fight which is finally culminating in the once-in-a-generation Renters Rights’ Bill.
We’ve seen other key victories along the way. The Conservative government restored local housing allowance to cover the cheapest third of rents after campaigning from Shelter – and passed legislation allowing councils to buy land without having to pay extortionate ‘hope value’. During the pandemic we pivoted in response to the emergency, and successfully pushed for a ban on all evictions.
And in 2021 and 2022 our strategic litigation saw the courts establish that refusing to rent to people on benefits is indirect discrimination and therefore unlawful under the Equality Act.
None of this would have happened, I believe, without the changes we made in Shelter to organise in our local communities and build a national movement for change. Our transformational support for individuals and families continues, but now those individuals, families and communities are at the heart of our campaigns as well as our services. We’re not a think tank, we are an activist organisation. We were not founded just to pick up the pieces, or to complain about how bad things are. We were founded to change things.
Which brings me to the future. Yes, the narrative on social housing has shifted beyond recognition since 2017. But that is not enough. Yes, the new government has demonstrated it is willing to reform planning, funding, legislation and policy in order to enable more social homes to be delivered. But the change we really need is yet to come.
Let me be clear: anything less than significant investment in social housing at the Spending Review will derail attempts to end homelessness and fail to fix our broken housing system. The government must deliver the lasting solutions that will transform this country and rebuild the rotting foundations of our society. The promise that hard work can bring a good life is broken in this country – a broken promise that is driving the upheaval we see all around us.
The government needs to make that promise a reality again: a promise that begins with home.