A Pitch For A Comprehensive Housing Program In England

By
Rosemary Foulds
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three storey, multi-coloured brick faced building
Jermyn Court, Jermyn Street, Bradford photo by Stephen Armstrong is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed
These homes were built in 2017 for for people leaving homelessness in Bradford, England. Should housing like this be part of a comprehensive response to England's housing crisis?

The Anglican Church in England is prominent among members of an informal alliance of organizations and people.  They are calling for changes to England’s housing system. While studying the country’s housing programs and the housing experiences of residents, the alliance identified multiple mismatches, conflicts and gaps.

Why so many? According to the alliance, England lacks an overarching framework to hold the housing programs accountable. The alliance has gone further and collaborated to produce a framework called Homes For All: A Vision For England’s Housing System (Homes For All).

Homes For All organizes its framework in four categories:

    • Better homes, which covers habitability, affordability and suitability.
    • An effective housing market, which opens the door to non-market housing and changes to regulations governing housing finance.
    • Better systems, which includes guidelines for experiences of homelessness, rises in housing prices and coordination with related services1.
    • Better policy and policy-making that is based on evidence and monitoring2.

Homes For All, and the work that went into creating it, is a strong start. Lots of people from different interest groups were involved in putting it together. The next question is: will the government embrace this effort and adopt Homes For All as national policy?

Interestingly, the alliance behind Homes For All can point to an external supporter: the United Nations (the UN). The United Kingdom3 has ratified a number of the UN’s documents on human rights. Ratified documents include rights for women, children, as well as economic, social, and cultural rights4. The act of ratification is a country’s commitment to move towards achieving those rights.

The UN completes periodic reviews of countries and reports on progress towards the documents that a country has ratified5.

On the issue of housing, the United Nations’ most recent periodic review found that United Kingdom has a way to go. The periodic review pointed out gaps in the United Kingdom’s housing system that limit the enjoyment of housing rights among specific groups of people. The groups identified include people who are homeless, minority populations and children6. Homes For All , which is locally produced and widely supported, broadly addresses the housing issues raised in the most recent periodic review.

Homes For All is intended for England, but the content will be of interest to readers in other jurisdictions. Also, readers outside England may be interested in the process which the alliance followed to create Homes for All. It is posted by CACHE: Homes For All: A Vision For England’s Housing System

Footnotes

  1. Examples include social care, health care and social security.
  2. Topics include land assembly and acquisition, community planning and taking account of regional differences.
  3. Note that the UN reviews the United Kingdom as a whole. The United Kingdom includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
  4. The document on economic, social and cultural rights includes a definition of adequate housing.
  5. You can read more about the United Nations’ periodic review process here.
  6. You can read more about the results of the periodic review in the United Kingdom  here.