Postcards from the housing emergency: send a message to the Secretary of State for Housing

Send Angela Rayner, the new Secretary of State for Housing, a welcome card and let her know you support getting councils building social homes at scale again.  

We’ll deliver your postcards at the start of the new Parliamentary session in September, not only showing why it is vital they do this – but how. 

We haven’t built enough social homes for decades and now there is record child homelessness in England. Over 176,000 children are homeless and living in damaging temporary accommodation. Housing costs have soared. Overcrowding, damp and mould are rife.   

The last time Angela Rayner was Secretary of State for Housing, she secured a £39 billion investment for social and affordable homes, and tackled Right to Buy. This is a firm foundation to start from. But to bring an end to the housing emergency, we need ambitious, urgent change. We need 90,000 social homes every year, for 10 years.  

To make sure everyone has a decent home they can afford, the government needs to make getting councils building social homes again their priority.  

Here's the postcard we're going to send.

To reduce our environmental impact, we will have a limited number of physical postcards that we can post, so we will send any extras by email. 

• How can the government get councils building again?

  On the postcard we send to Angela Rayner, we will include your message and the ways the government can get councils building social rent homes at scale. In the 1960s and 1970s, councils built over 100,000 of them every year on average. They gave millions of people a foundation to thrive. This government promised a council housing revolution. With over 176,000 children living in temporary accommodation right now, we need urgent, ambitious action from this government to build enough social homes to end the housing emergency.

  The new Secretary of State for Housing must: 

  1. remove historic housing debt that local authorities owe to central government so councils stop having to use their funds to pay off this debt and can start investing in new social homes instead. More than 100 councils have said this is essential for the future of council housing.
  2. unlock low-cost finance for council building. Change Treasury rules so councils are no longer at a disadvantage (compared to other social housing landlords) for getting the low-cost loans that they need to build.
  3. support councils to buy land at low prices. Because right now, there are usually huge mark-ups involved if councils want to buy land – making that land highly unaffordable for building new social homes on it.
  4. give local authorities more power and funding to transform empty homes into quality social homes. This would let councils breathe new life into empty flats and houses, turning these forgotten spaces into new homes for their communities.
  5. increase investment in social housing. The funding for social housing in the Social and Affordable Housing Programme announced last year was much needed, but we must continue to boost the funding for social homes to the scale the housing emergency demands.