The history of housing associations

Housing associations continued to form through the early 20th century and, alongside local councils, played an important role in alleviating slum conditions. After World War II, council housebuilding boomed as the nation invested in social homes for post-war workers. However, for the first half of the 20th century, housing association homes made up a relatively small proportion of social housing overall.

This began to change in the 1960s and 1970s. The influential film Cathy Come Home, along with homelessness campaigning by the newly formed charities Shelter and Crisis, increased public concern about homelessness. Many new housing associations were founded in this time with a clear aim of helping to tackle rising homelessness.

Then, in 1974, a new Housing Act meant housing associations could receive significant public funding for the first time to build new social homes. By 1980, there were more than 400,000 housing association homes in England. 

In the late 1980s, many councils transferred their social housing into housing association ownership through Large-Scale Voluntary Transfer agreements. Housing associations were also given new freedoms to borrow private funding to build new homes, topping up the funding they received from the government. They built 419,000 new homes between 1990 and 2010.

The recent work of housing associations has been shaped by government funding changes. In 2010, funding for building affordable housing reduced by 60% and funding for new social rented housing was stopped altogether.

Housing associations adapted to this change by generating their own income to build social and affordable rented homes. They began to develop more homes for sale and market rent and invested the proceeds into building more social homes and into supporting their local communities.

They built almost 20,000 social rented homes in this way between 2015/16 and 2018/19, as well as nearly 77,000 for affordable rent and nearly 43,000 for shared ownership.