Last week, I participated in the London launch of Safe as Houses, Shelter England’s essay collection, making the economic case for social housing. The essays are well worth reading, ranging far and wide, but demonstrating that many leading economists in academia, the public sector and in practice, share the sense that social housing supports the economy, productivity, provides security to grow and be healthy, and as Glen Bramley says in his chapter, actually crowds-in rather than crowds out the private sector. This is a far cry from the conventional lazy argument of old about social housing being largely deadweight. In fact, going back some way now, research has shown that social housing is additional (and this is implicit in the Ministry’s own appraisal guide. Earlier work by Savills made this clear and should be repeated.

In my own contribution, I discuss the political economy of effectively making the case in a way that satisfies HM Treasury and speaks to the evidence on the economic impact, noting that as in most areas, there is both convincing and less convincing evidence.

The paper concludes (p.16): “The social housing programme is a key part of the wider housing supply target for many reasons. One is that a planned social housing effort will likely be more predictable and achievable in the short run than market supply can be…..However, it is important that we recognise that these initiatives are long term projects and that it will take time to see results in terms of overall pressure lessening. Most obviously, with the new town programme but, more generally, the long-lived stock-dominated housing system will adjust only slowly and will require long-term constancy of priority and effort. That is the single most important change of direction in government thinking that is required. Start for the long term now. It is never too early to do so.”

We need more analysis with control groups or counterfactuals, properly controlled longitudinal evidence on the impact of social housing on outcomes, and a willingness to evaluate interventions to see which ones are the most effective and offer value for money in the broadest sense. At a time when the UK government is discussing a generational investment in new social housing, it is really important that this is done well and lessons learned.

Our colleague Duncan Maclennan has long been advancing the case for the economic productivity benefits of more affordable housing especially for leading metropolitan regions. So, it was especially interesting to hear about the housing and productivity work going on in London presented by Adam Yousef, the chief economist at the GLA. I was also impressed by the clarity of the contributions made by Ann Pettifor in the panel session (and in her essay contribution to the Shelter collection), explaining how government economy policy is pulled different ways by the relevant institutions (OBR, HM Treasury and the Bank) as well as providing an excellent 90 seconds explainer on how the bonds markets work, and when and why to be worried about gilts.