Safe Homes Now
No one should have to live in a home that damages their health, yet it is the norm for far too many people in England today. We’re leading a national campaign to fix unsafe homes.
Too many people are living in dangerous homes
Nearly 8 million people in England are living in homes that are cold, need repair, or have serious hazards. For many, living in a dangerous home will be life-limiting – and for some, it will even kill them. Non-decent homes restrict people’s life chances and hurts our nation’s health. They also harm the economy, limit productivity, and needlessly cost the NHS and social care billions each year.
The Safe Homes Now campaign
We have launched Safe Homes Now to highlight the consequences of England’s poor-quality housing for a range of different groups.
We are calling on the UK government to fix this hidden housing crisis by:
- Delivering a national strategy to tackle poor quality housing across all tenures.
- Committing to halve the number of non-decent homes over the next decade.
Why do we need to fix dangerous homes?
More than 80% of the homes that will exist in 2050 have already been built.
It is therefore vital that we pay close attention to the state of these homes to ensure they are not damaging people’s health. We must actively improve the safety and quality of our existing homes.
By failing to address dangerous homes we are limiting the lives of some of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
But improving poor quality homes means longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives for everyone, reduced burden on health and social care services, and more jobs and skills in the economy.
Campaign supporters
Why Safe Homes Now?
There are important and influential campaigns working to address housing affordability and availability, but less attention has been given to the quality of homes that we currently live in.
Our campaign has come together to raise awareness of the consequences of poor-quality homes from a wide variety of perspectives. We are campaigning so that no one in England has to live in a home that damages their health and limits their life.
We will build on the work of the Good Home Inquiry (2021), commissioned by the Centre for Ageing Better, which directly engaged with over 1,000 members of the public and commissioned research from prominent think tanks and academic institutions. The Inquiry examined the state of England’s housing and proposed measures to fix the situation.
Get involved
If your organisation wants to add its support for Safe Homes Now, get in touch.
Read more about our research into the causes and solutions to England’s poor-quality housing through the Good Home Inquiry.
Spotlight series
Unsafe and poor-quality homes have serious health consequences for millions of people in Britain today. Our Safe Homes Now spotlights series brings the consequences of unsafe homes into focus by looking at the different aspects of the crisis of poor-quality housing.
The spotlights series explores the real-life consequences for individuals and communities and highlights the need for urgent action to fix our existing housing stock. Each spotlight contains recommendations for government that, if implemented, would contribute to safer and healthier homes for us all to live in.