Member

This housing crisis is what happens when we commodify a very basic human need. Forty years on, we still live with the consequences of the Thatcherite settlement that laid the foundations of the modern-day housing crisis. High rents cost the taxpayer considerably: they keep the homeless stuck in temporary accommodation, which costs our councils billions and has put them on the verge of bankruptcy; and they considerably burden the Department for Work and Pensions, whose local housing allowance routinely fails to keep pace with rent increases.