Make the case for housing

The billboards are as the ad men intended: impossible to miss. David Cameron, looking gleamingly airbrushed and imploring, ‘We can’t go on like this. I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.’

Predictably, campaigning for this year’s general election started almost indecently early, with new year celebrations barely cold. As a Cameron-emblazoned hoarding near you will show, equally foreseeable was the policy area picked to kick it all off.

Health remains the make or break election campaign issue, hotly pursued by education and crime. None of which, as Mr Cameron is careful to hammer home, can be separated from the nation’s limping economy.

What the clever slogans fail to convey is the other element fundamental to every aspect of our lives: housing.

Take Mr Cameron’s billboard pledge. Housing already contributes on both those fronts, helping people stay well, saving precious NHS cash and doing its bit to slow the spiralling £178 billion national economic deficit in the process. We know that. You know that. But are those hoping to run the next UK government in the loop?

Today we launch House Proud - making the case for housing, a joint campaign from Inside Housing and the Chartered Institute of Housing. Its aim is to shout about housing’s crucial contribution to every aspect of social policy; to provide the stats, stories and case studies which prove beyond doubt that successful lives are founded on decent housing; and to present data which persuade whoever wins the keys to Number 10 later this year that cutting the housing budget is a foolhardy move certain to increase pressure on the vote-winning budgets they seek to preserve.

‘Whichever government enters office in 2010, it will have some big decisions to make on public expenditure and priorities,’ says Sarah Webb, chief executive of the CIH.

‘The launch of the House Proud campaign gives us all an opportunity to remind everyone - politicians, civil servants, homeowners, tenants, funders, residents, housing professionals, the media, business - both of the absolute need to maintain housing as a priority and of the essential contribution to wider social policy agendas that housing makes. I hope you will support this campaign.’

So how will House Proud work? It has three aims. First we want 250 backers signed up to a House Proud petition, to be delivered to the new government.

Second, we want each of the three main political parties to include a housing pledge in their election manifestos.

Finally, we want to get the sector fighting housing’s corner as the election approaches. Make housing a key election issue at evey opportunity, and encourage staff, residents, friends and family to do the same.

To get things rolling, between now and the election Inside Housing will make sure you have everything you need to make the argument for housing wherever you are in the UK. We will bring you killer stats and detailed analysis of housing’s contribution in seven key policy areas - from health to crime. (And those running for power will be getting their copies too.) We’ll be chasing big name backers, helping the debate sizzle with regular talking heads, getting out on the stump with the candidates and more.

But for House Proud to succeed in ensuring the sector gets its rightful slice of the pie under the new government, it needs your support. Of course you can sign our petition and send in your manifesto suggestions - and we hope you do (see box: How to get involved). More than this, though, we need you to shout the virtues of housing from every rooftop. In short, you need to be so House Proud you can’t help telling everyone about it. (See the Starters for 10 box for inspiration.)

It has never been more crucial to ensure that whoever wins the forthcoming election knows just how valuable housing is to the nation’s health and prosperity. Think of it as the sector’s very own billboard. Make the case for housing. Be House Proud.