A network-building project mapping the policy, financial and technical interventions that can provide affordable homes for all, while protecting and enhancing our environment.
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About HDCE (Animation: Imaginatrix, Bathuan Bintas)
About HDCE (Animation: Imaginatrix, Bathuan Bintas)
2024 saw a record average increase in private rental costs of over 9% across the UK.
320,000 people are homeless and 112,660 households living in temporary accommodation – a record-high.
In England, house prices are almost 9 times annual disposable incomes, the widest gap for 150 years.
To make ends meet, people are living in poor-quality and cramped conditions, which is undermining health and wellbeing, burdening the NHS and suppressing productivity.
We now have more bedrooms per person than ever before — and more housing space per person than in the mid-1990s — yet this growing surplus of housing has done little to improve affordability.
Previous trends suggest that even if we hit the target of 1.5 million new homes within this parliament (by 2030) — a rate of building many argue is unrealistic — it would reduce the ratio of rents to incomes by just ~1 percentage point.
This is because the broader system of policies — on housing, tax and mortgage credit — is pushing up prices and favouring better off home-owners and landlords, over those who are struggling to make ends meet.
Without mass retrofit, and with 300,000 ‘business as usual’ homes built every year, housing will soon consume the country’s ENTIRE carbon budget.