Pagani, Anna;
Zimmermann, Nici;
Macmillan, Alex;
Zhou, Ke;
Davies, Michael;
(2025)
Systemic issues in the English social housing sector: mapping interconnected challenges faced by London-based housing associations.
Housing Studies
10.1080/02673037.2025.2467093.
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Abstract
The provision of good-quality social housing is crucial in addressing disparities in cities. However, in England—and particularly in London—the supply of social rent homes is threatened by interconnected pressures. The resulting complexity is difficult for housing providers to navigate, and interventions designed in response often reinforce, rather than alleviate, existing issues. Instead of tackling these issues in isolation, this paper seeks to provide a picture of their interconnections, supporting reflection on leverage points effecting change across the system. Using systems thinking, we developed six diagrams of the cause-and-effect relationships that underpin critical issues in the English social housing sector, as identified in the literature. These causal loop diagrams (CLDs) were then explored and enriched over a series of participatory activities involving four London-based housing associations and the authors of the source publications. The CLDs display the systemic effects of changes in politics and policies, and of the strategies devised in response—emerging from partial understandings of the system and the prioritization of different goals (e.g. viability, housing targets, speculation). The proposed leverage points challenge beliefs about the mechanisms required to address issues in the social housing sector, offering an alternative approach to the frequent revisions of housing policies.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Systemic issues in the English social housing sector: mapping interconnected challenges faced by London-based housing associations |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/02673037.2025.2467093 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2025.2467093 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Social housing; housing associations; systems thinking; system dynamics; leverage points |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Bartlett School Env, Energy and Resources |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205963 |
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