The Asks Around Social Housing: Tackling the UK Housing Crisis

In the time it takes you to read this article (around 4 or 5 minutes), at least one household will become homeless in England. The struggles to stay afloat with rent, to find social housing and the issues of temporary accommodation impact hundreds of thousands of people in the UK daily. It costs local councils millions and there is not enough work being done to fix the crisis. All of these ideas were explored at our Supporting Vulnerable Tenants Conference 2025.

Shelter is a housing and homelessness charity that exists to defend the right to a safe home. Last year, the charity had over 7.1 million visits to their online advice and services page. Over 16,000 people had queries answered by their professional advice services and 4,000+ legal cases were assisted by Shelter’s justice system. These statistics highlight just how entrenched Shelter is within the fight for safe housing for all. Their experiences are channelled by Connie Cullen, who spoke at our conference. In her keynote, ‘The Asks Around Social Housing’, Connie discussed the lack of social homes being created, the issues around private rent prices, the lack of governmental change and how temporary accommodation is entering a state of national emergency.

The Issue of ‘Temporary’ Accommodation

Connie started the session by highlighting how every three minutes a household becomes homeless in England. At the end of May, over 165,000 households were living in temporary accommodation. This is the highest number on record (since records began in 2004) She further highlighted that almost half of families in temporary accommodation have been there for longer than two years. If you know that the place you are living is ‘temporary’, how can you ever get comfortable there? It leads to confusion and stress – two things that should never be associated with the home. Shelter has also found that there is a racial imbalance in temporary housing.

“Black-led households are 12x more likely to be living in temporary housing than white-led households.” – Connie Cullen

The racial imbalance in temporary accommodation is rooted in structural inequality – from centuries-old discrimination to extreme barriers in housing affordability and support systems. It is clear that the UK needs improved discrimination protections in housing. If housing doesn’t get more affordable, and the discriminatory practices don’t change, the patterns will repeat, continuing to entrench a racial divide that should never have existed in the first place.

The main reason that there are so many families stuck in temporary accommodation is due to a lack of social housing. The delivery of social rent homes has decreased year-on-year since 2010. Connie states that there were around 40,000 social homes created in 2010. Now, there are around 10,000 per year. This is leading to more and more reliance on temporary accommodation. Moving a family from temporary housing to a real home will change their lives drastically. It allows for the family to actually settle. Instead of living day-to-day, unsure when they will be displaced again. A settled family can begin to spread roots, joining their community and regaining their feet. Instead of looking at the next few weeks, they can start looking at the next few years.

Connie then reminds us that there are currently around 1.3 million households waiting for social housing. With the rate at which new social housing comes available, temporary accommodation isn’t temporary at all. It becomes where you live, where you and your families grow up. Shelter works hard to try and fight this, because they understand that a family without a secure home is never comfortable, never at peace. Living with fear of being uprooted leads to confusion, stress and anxiety.

“Decades of failure to build enough social homes combined with runaway rents and rising evictions has caused homelessness to spiral. Too many children are being forced to grow up homeless in grotty, cramped hostels and B&Bs, sharing beds with their siblings, with no place to play or do their homework.” – Polly Neale, Chief Executive of Shelter

Private Renting and the Lack of Social Housing

The next part of Connie’s session looked at the issues surrounding private rent properties. She highlighted how 17% of households are skipping meals or cutting back on food just to pay rent. This is further amplified by the cost of living crisis plaguing England, adding more pressure to the finances of private renters.  In the hubs that Shelter runs, this is a daily occurrence – parents skipping meals so their children can eat, families being behind on rent payments or having to borrow money just to stay afloat, simply delaying the inevitable.

What’s worse, temporary accommodation costs councils over £6 million every day. Shelter’s figures show that by 2029, it is forecasted to be over £11 million. Connie believes that there needs to be significant investments into social housing from the government to tackle the housing emergency. In the keynote, Connie expressed how important it is that councils create new social housing. They need to push up the total delivered each year to at least 90,000.

They can’t build these social homes anywhere. The economical limitations of people who need social housing means they often don’t have access to a car, so public transport links are required.

Connie looks towards the Labour Party to make these changes. In their 2024 manifesto, they pledged to build 1.5 million new homes in the UK, some of which would be social housing. As of the start of July 2025, according to the BBC the number of new homes being built had actually declined 8% on last year – but the number of planning applications for new housing had risen by 49%. Whilst it appears that more houses are being planned, the timeframe between acquiring planning permission to the houses being available to live in can take over a year. Change may well be occurring to bring the number of new homes closer to the numbers pledged – closer to the numbers Shelter believes the UK needs – but it is not happening fast enough for Shelter’s liking.

Similarly to this conference, our National Homelessness Event 2026 will explore how the government can aim to fix homelessness, temporary accommodation and deliver on the promised amount of new homes in their manifesto. It is happening on the 28th of January 2026. You can find out more about the upcoming event here.

The Social and Economic Benefits

The benefits of social housing are clear – it is designed for those who cannot afford the demands of private renters. On average, social housing rent is a third of private rent. It allows for families to settle into a house and call it home. In the long run, social housing is also far more economical for councils than temporary accommodation, which is often rented from private owners at extortionate fees.

Connie dives into this further, pulling out research that Shelter has put together. Shelter wants 90,000 social homes a year, and they have calculated that would add just over 50 billion to the economy with almost 140,000 jobs. Over the next 30 years that would bring in a significant profit to the taxpayer. Shelter believes that initial costs of building these social homes would be paid back within 11 years. Additionally it would help secure the education of over 165,000 children, who will then grow up to contribute to UK society. At the moment, whilst these children are receiving education, it can be fragmented by the moving around of temporary accommodation and also how cramped it is, with nowhere to study or even do homework.

Shelter is a human right, and the current state of things in the UK have led to hundreds of thousands of people feeling displaced, confused and stressed by where they live. Many families cannot afford private rent, and with the amount of social homes built at the lowest it has been in the past 10 years, change is necessary to provide people with a place they can call home. Connie Cullen and Shelter strongly believe that governmental efforts need to increase drastically, and racial imbalances need to be addressed.

We’d like to thank Connie Cullen for her talk at The Supporting Vulnerable Tenants Conference. You could see the passion she has for her work, and the efforts of Shelter to support families who are struggling with housing is powerful. You can find out more about Shelter here. Our upcoming National Homelessness Event will be an excellent opportunity to find out more about this pressing issue from industry leaders, including a keynote session from Lord Bird, Founder and Editor in Chief at The Big Issue.