Oh, and if this has motivated you to want to support the people who work day in day out to support Britain’s homeless, I’m running the Hackney Half Marathon on Sunday to raise money for Shelter.

Donations very welcome 🙏

justgiving.com/page/john-burn…

Here’s the column again in full ft.com/content/24117a…

To conclude, this is why the 'build more houses' crowd is not only absolutely right, but is making an argument that would deliver enormous social good.

The homelessness crisis is a crisis of housing supply and affordability, and on both scores Britain fares the worst.

This is precisely why the people who argue against increased housebuilding because 'that would leave loads of spare homes' are so wrong.

A functioning housing market needs lots of spare capacity, and if you want to solve homelessness you need spare homes.

England began trialling this approach in 2020, and in the cases where rehousing was possible, the results were glowing.

But a report noted that “accessing affordable and suitable accommodation continues to be a major challenge”.

Another demonstration of the undersupply issue comes from England’s pilot of the 'housing first' approach.

This is where homeless people are immediately given a new permanent dwelling, rather than gradually transitioning towards independent living as they prove their readiness.

But as Paul Johnson has written before, the solution here cannot just be pouring more and more money into housing benefits ifs.org.uk/articles/doubl…

We need to fix the root causes: chronic undersupply of all types of housing, and the erosion of the social sector.

Onto 3)

Compounding these issues in the UK is the repeated freezing of housing benefit. According to an analysis by Institute for Fiscal Studies, the share of private rented homes in England where rents are covered by housing benefit has declined from one in six to one in 20 in just 10 years.

Without social housing, those at the bottom of society will be homeless.

But without sufficient housing of all kinds (very much including new market-rate homes), land prices and market rents rise rapidly, making the construction and subsidisation of new social homes infeasible.

Cities like Vienna and Helsinki demonstrate this.

Both are full of affordable housing, with homelessness low and falling.

But contrary to some narratives, this is not just because of social housing. The stock and new supply of market-rate homes is also far higher than London.

But just as some on the right dismiss the role of subsidised housing, there is also a tendency for some on the left to dismiss the importance of new market-rate housing in addressing the supply of affordable homes.

Both are needed.

ft.com/content/86836a…

On 2)

This is an unpopular opinion in some quarters, but social housing specifically is crucial here.

This is because some people on very low incomes simply cannot afford market rents. This will always be true in any country.

And Britain’s social housing stock is shrinking.

This shortage is a problem both because it has sent private sector rents spiralling, and for the very simple reason that if you want to alleviate homelessness, you need homes to put people in (more on this later).

On 1)

Relative to its population size, the UK builds fewer homes than the vast majority of other developed countries.

This is why it grates when people say 'but the amount of homes you’re saying we need to build is unrealistic'.

Our peer countries manage it just fine.

This British nightmare is due to three main factors:
1) Woefully inadequate rates of housebuilding
2) A dwindling social housing sector (yes we do need social housing specifically)
3) The erosion of financial support for those unable to afford market rents

Finding and paying for this accommodation also imposes enormous costs on councils, which last year spent almost £1.8bn on emergency shelter, a figure that has more than doubled in real terms over the past decade.

This is one of the reasons Britain’s councils are short on cash.

Over the last 5 years, these dire conditions have contributed to the deaths of 55 children.

This is not just saying '55 children died while in temporary accommodation'.

It’s saying they died *because of this accommodation*.

Respiratory infections from mould, for example.

To those who respond to this with 'they have rooms and beds, they don’t count', I suggest reading this eye-opening report from Shelter, which describes the horrendous conditions of this accommodation.

Infestations, no running water, no cooking facilities downloads.ctfassets.net/6sxvmndnpn0s/2…

Averaged across OECD countries, 80% of homeless people are those staying in shelters, hostels and other temporary accommodation.

This group is invisible to most of us, but in England it amounts to 113,000 households, among them 146,000 children. That is *1 in 200 households*.

Here the column in full ft.com/content/24117a…

Now let’s get into the detail: