How do we solve the housing crisis in a climate emergency?

Politicians from across the political spectrum say we need to build hundreds of thousands of new houses to solve the housing crisis. The government wants to change the planning system to fast-track these new developments.

Housing campaigners, however, have never supported this pro-developer agenda and we have long opposed new developments that are largely unaffordable or come at the expense of demolishing social housing. We have argued that building social, not private, housing is the solution to the housing crisis.

But the climate crisis poses a new challenge to us about whether we should still support new house building at all.

The scientific consensus is that we need to slash greenhouse gas emissions dramatically in this decade to have any chance of avoiding a catastrophic ecological and societal crisis.

When construction already accounts for 10% of our greenhouse gas emissions how do we reconcile these conflicting interests?

The meeting was for housing and environmental campaigners to tease out these issues with a view to developing a charter of demands which can lead to united action.

The people who led off the discussion were:

Prof. Paul Watt, author of Estate Regeneration and its Discontents;

Sara Edmonds, Thematic Group Coordinator for the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN);

Dr Rex McKenzie, an economist doing research in the area of wealth and housing inequality;

Sabine Mairey from the Save Central Hill campaign who has been researching the impact of construction on biodiversity;

Chris Bailey from Action on Empty Homes;

Richard Lee from Just Space

A video of the meeting can be downloaded here.

and the chat from the zoom meeting can be accessed here

Chris Bailey Action on empty homes Meeting Slides

Chris Bailey’s slides can be accessed here

Sara Edmonds Architects Climate Action Network Meeting Slides

Sara Edmond’s slides can be accessed here

Dr. Rex McKenzie Economist

Meeting slides are here