
Affordable living
Think tank: Social Market Foundation
Author(s): Niamh O Regan; Jamie Gollings
April 11, 2024
This report from UK think tank the Social Market Foundation looks at the role social and cooperative housing can play and what the UK can learn from other countries.
High house prices are putting homeownership out of reach for many, but rising rents and insecurity of tenure make the private rental sector an undesirable long-term option.
This Social Market Foundation report – the fourth in our series on the problem of housing – looks at the role social and cooperative housing can play and what the UK can learn from other countries. Falling homeownership rates and dissatisfaction with private renting mean there is a role for social housing and co-operative housing to play in tackling the housing crisis.
The UK has a relatively large social housing stock, but it has been dwindling since the 1980s, contributing to rising waiting lists. Co-operative housing offers tenants greater security of tenure and lower rents than the private sector, but the UK makes less use of housing co-operatives than other Anglosphere countries, and far less than Scandinavia. Cooperative housing also requires government support to overcome challenges relating to their legal status, finance and funding, education and finding land.
To support the growth of social housing, the government should end the right to buy, put in place long-term funding plans and commit to substantial capital investment to establish a revolving funding model.
To stimulate the growth of co-operative housing, the government should give social and private tenants a ‘collective right to buy’, with priority over other bidders, and build a national database of land suitable for community-led development. It should also establish a Co-operative Housing Lender backed by a state guarantee, and expand the network of community housing support hubs.