A big picture for housing

These five core values, we suggest, serve as vital criteria that make for good homes.

• They are sustainable: good housing does not gradually undermine the planet on which we live and which we are called to protect and to cultivate. It works in harmony with its local environment and over the long term it sustains the balance of the natural world in which it sits.
• They are safe: housing policy and the design and build process need to make safety a priority, so that houses are places people can live in with security and privacy from unwanted intrusion. This core value will also require intervention from time to time, to avoid some of the injustices and decay that will result from a careless approach to housing quality or policy.
• They are stable: good housing policy creates stable communities where, if they wish to stay and act in a neighbourly way, people are able to buy or rent at truly affordable prices. They will be able put down roots and build lives, families and neighbourhoods, free from the threat of dislodgment, not least because we tend to commit to places and communities where we are likely to have a longer-term stake.
• They are sociable: houses need to have enough space, not just for the needs of their inhabitants but also to enable them to exercise hospitality towards their neighbours. Developments need proper community space beyond the home to enable interaction and fellowship and to build strong community bonds.
• They are satisfying: good homes are places we delight to come home to, that give pleasure and satisfaction, both to live in and look at. Whether through design or architecture, our ever-increasing technological ability needs to be directed towards building homes that we genuinely enjoy living in.

This big picture of what ‘good’ looks like in housing can act as a test for a particular housing development, an individual design for a home or for an overarching housing policy. The commission’s hope is that this framework might serve as a useful common standard across the housing sector to help us aspire to the kind of housing our nation and our neighbours need.

There is one more factor, however. It’s not so much a descriptor of housing, but an essential element if we are to solve our housing crisis: sacrifice.

At present the cost of the crisis falls on the poorest – those in substandard or overcrowded housing. The crisis we face will not be solved without a willingness on behalf of all parties in the housing industry – developers, housing associations, government, landowners – making some form of sacrifice, so that the burden is shared.

But that sacrifice will be worth it if we can build villages, towns, suburbs and cities to live in that can be a lasting legacy long into the future, strengthen the bonds between us and enable us to live as we were intended to do.

Dr Graham Tomlin, Bishop of Kensington; and vice-chair, Archbishop of Canterbury’s commission on housing, church and community