The danger of building homes at any cost

I fear a perfect storm is coming for housing delivery in the UK. Construction costs remain high, housing values have softened and  viability has all but disappeared. Even with grant funding many schemes do not stack up and still the government insists on a target of 1.5 million homes, with many expected to be social and affordable.

But homes do not appear because politicians announce numbers. Without the right processes, resources and skills, we risk creating a system driven by output rather than long-term quality. Housing delivery is complex, good housing even more so.

The return of the hot potato

To overcome the viability crisis, many public-sector housing providers are turning towards joint ventures and partnership models reminiscent of PFI-era thinking. Partly this is about funding. Partly it is about transferring risk.

In simple terms, it can feel like: “You take this hot potato off our hands, and in return we will be tied to you financially for decades.”

Public housing has become politically and financially difficult territory. You know there is a problem when you hear people say “It’s only social housing.”

That sentence should alarm everyone. Quality is often the first casualty when financial pressure and delivery targets dominate decision-making. The writing is on the wall, and often it is a badly built, poorly designed wall.

Housing defines places for generations

Housing is unlike most other forms of development. Poor offices can be converted, retail parks can disappear but housing shapes neighbourhoods for generations. Once communities are established, moving people is difficult and disruptive. Bad housing can blight an area for decades.

Poorly designed places depress land values, undermine civic pride and make everyday life harder

Poorly designed places depress land values, undermine civic pride and make everyday life harder. We then spend years managing decline before arriving at regeneration schemes that admit we got it wrong the first time. Too often, “regeneration” is simply code for repair.

Yet we continue to treat design quality as an optional extra rather than essential infrastructure.

Place quality matters, regardless of tenure

A badly designed private development damages a neighbourhood. A badly designed social housing scheme does the same. Streets do not become more forgiving because homes are affordable. Social housing arguably demands higher standards because these homes often remain in public ownership for generations.

If the first phase of a public housing scheme is poor, values suffer. The same provider then returns requesting compromises on the next phase because viability has weakened. The spiral begins, followed later by another expensive regeneration programme intended to fix the original mistakes.

Good places work differently. Well-structured streets, robust urban forms and adaptable buildings retain their quality even as they evolve. Buildings change use, extensions appear and populations shift but the underlying urban structure remains resilient.

The pressure on planning

My concern is that planning departments will be pressured to prioritise speed and housing numbers over place quality. Who becomes the guardian of minimum standards? Not just technical compliance, but spatial quality, civic quality and long-term stewardship.

Every council should have a dedicated design officer, a design review panel or a city architect, ideally all three

Once poor housing is approved and built, the consequences are difficult to reverse. Many estates now earmarked for regeneration were once ambitious answers to housing shortages. The lesson is not that ambition is dangerous, it is that short-term thinking is dangerous.

Every council should have a dedicated design officer, a design review panel or a city architect, ideally all three. But these roles must have genuine influence, not advisory status. Too often, design quality is strongest at planning stage and then diluted through procurement, value engineering and delivery. What begins as a thoughtful scheme can gradually lose the qualities that made it successful.

Strong design leadership - and project champions embedded within organisations - can help hold the core principles together. This is not about over-prescriptive control or obsessing over aesthetic details. Good placemaking comes from sensible ground principles: safe and legible streets, homes with good light and outlook, robust public spaces, clear front doors, adaptable buildings, walkable neighbourhoods and developments that contribute positively to their context.

The skill is safeguarding quality without paralysing delivery.

Young people are losing hope

I often speak to younger people who feel they have little realistic chance of accessing housing or building stable futures where they grew up. Many are considering moving away from families and support networks simply to start somewhere affordable.

Lack of affordable housing is no longer just an economic issue, it is fracturing our society.

More affordable housing, and different models of affordable housing, could restore hope for a generation. But the current delivery model often feels trapped between speculation, viability exercises and an overreliance on traditional ownership structures.

We have spent decades reinforcing a narrow model centred on private ownership and landlordism. Yet people increasingly want different ways of living: co-operative housing, community-led housing, intergenerational living, stable rental models and genuinely affordable long-term options.

Learning from successful places

The principles for creating good housing are not new and we do not need to reinvent city-making from scratch. We need to learn from successful places, historic and contemporary, and evolve those lessons intelligently. I often refer to Urban Design Learning and the Housing Design Awards as valuable resource for good examples of placemaking and housing design. There are of course other resources. Across the country, exemplary projects demonstrate how density, affordability and good placemaking can coexist. What is missing is a stronger national culture around place quality.

There is a need for something akin to an Academy of Place: a cross-disciplinary body focused on sharing knowledge, championing design quality and helping shape neighbourhoods people genuinely want to live in. This would help address a need to share practical learning rather than theoretical urbanism. 

A legacy worth leaving

I genuinely hope I am wrong. I hope 1.5 million homes are delivered to an exemplary standard, creating places future generations will be proud of. Places that strengthen communities, support wellbeing and restore optimism for younger people.

But that will only happen if we stop treating design quality as expendable.

Maybe what we need is a visit from the ghosts of housing past, present and future, to remind us that the decisions we make today will shape people’s lives for generations.

Satish Jassal is director of Satish Jassal Architects. He is a London Mayor’s Design Advocate, sits on the Harrow, Haringey, Lewisham, Lambeth and OPDC design review panels. He is a board member and chair of the services committee at CDS Cooperatives housing association