The Price of Treating Housing as an Investment

Decades of treating housing as investment rather than social provision have produced failing homes, broken complaints systems and health consequences the sector is only beginning to confront. 

The policy context 

The UK housing sector did not arrive at its current condition through accident. Investigative journalist Pete Apps, contributing editor at Inside Housing and author of two significant works on the housing crisis, identifies a philosophical shift unfolding across four decades: the progressive reframing of housing from a social provision, comparable to health and education, to an investment vehicle underpinned by banking deregulation and the demutualisation of building societies. 

At a glance 

• London’s 33 boroughs spend approximately £5 million per day on temporary accommodation, the majority flowing directly to private landlords and agents. 

• Tenants who contact journalists, regulators or advocacy bodies are almost always doing so as a last resort, after months or years of unresolved complaints within the formal system. 

• Using the NHS or a state school carries no social stigma. Living in social housing does. That difference did not happen by accident.