Why Public Housing Was Abandoned and Why It Should Come Back
August 3, 2026 · Frisian News
In 1949, one in three Britons lived in publicly owned housing. By 2020, that had fallen to one in seventeen. It was not inevitable. Cities like Vienna and Singapore prove public housing works when governments choose to build.
For much of the twentieth century, a substantial share of Britons lived in publicly owned housing. By 2020, that share had fallen dramatically. The decline was not inevitable. It was a choice, made by politicians and developers who saw profit where others saw community need.
Public housing got a bad reputation, partly deserved, mostly not. The image of failed housing projects stuck even as most thrived quietly. Governments made a deliberate choice to abandon public building starting in the 1970s, selling off stock to tenants and developers. The ideology of the time said markets solve housing better than planners. Developers loved this. So did banks. They stood to profit enormously from turning housing into a commodity and land into an investment vehicle.
The market has had fifty years to prove itself. Housing costs have risen sharply in most Western countries even as wages flatlined. Young people cannot buy homes. Homelessness rose sharply in cities where public housing fell. Private landlords now capture tenfold billions yearly in rent that could build and maintain homes. None of it goes back into housing stock. The profit flows up.
Vienna builds large numbers of public apartments yearly. Singapore houses 80 percent of its population in public flats. These are not worker paradises, but they work. Rents stay affordable. People build lives in one place instead of being priced out every few years. Mixed-income public housing does not require ideological purity. It requires will.
The housing crisis will not solve itself through markets. It will solve itself when cities decide to build again. That means public money for public need, and the end of the lie that private markets work. The question is not whether we can afford to build. We cannot afford not to.
Published August 3, 2026 · Frisian News