Our lack of affordable, safe housing is a national crisis. Here are three things Labour can do to fix it | Peter Apps

The next Labour government must break with the idea that we can no longer afford to build new social rented homes, and instead return to the ideals of the postwar consensus, where housing provision was as much a role for the state as health and education.

The party should realise that higher levels of investment in social housing are necessary to make its big commitment to new towns work and to navigate the current market downturn.

Labour should change the state’s housing policy objective from boosting home ownership to relieving and preventing homelessness – the most obvious and tragic manifestation of our broken system.

By promising to be judged on its ability to reduce rough sleeping, the number of families in temporary accommodation and individuals who present to their local authority as homeless, Labour would mark a vital philosophical shift from which better policy would flow.

But in the longer term, Labour would need to explore western European private rental models, the defining characteristics of which are some form of rent control and long-term security of tenure.

The shocking scenes in Valencia last month, where 10 people died in a tower fire, are the most stark reminder of the urgent need to make our buildings safe.