COMMENT The Beveridge report, the 1942 blueprint for Britain’s welfare state, is an ode to how governments can battle with and smite social ills. Yet, even there, housing for the poor is filed as a “special problem”. Sixty-seven years on, it has not yet been solved. Kate Barker, the prime minister’s former housing adviser and a Bank of England monetary policy committee member, wants the UK to spend £6bn on social housing. But the UK’s arrangements for housing poor people need much more than a one-off cash injection.
Some workers will always be unable to earn enough money to pay the rent for high-quality housing. If governments insist on a minimum standard for housing – and they should – they must, therefore, also subsidise it. There are two ways to do this. Either states can write cheques to the poor, supplementing their incomes. Or governments can build housing and rent it out to the needy at below-market prices. The UK uses both systems – but neither of them particularly well.
