London faces an acute housing shortage, linked to growing social and economic inequality. HANNAH GIBBS argues we need to look beyond the targets to ask what types of homes and neighbourhoods Londoners need to thrive.
The built environment sector is using all its ingenuity to tackle the stretching target of 1.5 million new homes by 2030. With this focus on numbers, we risk overlooking the types of homes and neighbourhoods that London will need to create sustainable communities.
At this year’s annual conference, Homes for the Future, we ask how we can develop homes for the future in neighbourhoods that enable Londoners to thrive.
In June, the government announced a new Affordable Homes Programme that will deliver nearly £12 billion of investment to London over the next decade. The Mayor of London also launched a consultation on the next London Plan, which will include new borough-level housing targets.
In trying to meet these targets, the sector faces challenges to the viability of new housing. They include new building safety regulations, increased cost of finance and materials, and a worrying skills shortage.
Homes for the Future conference
Thursday 9 October 2025
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But new funding and political commitment also provide an unmissable opportunity to create the homes and neighbourhoods that will serve future generations of Londoners.
Our conference in October will consider how to take this opportunity.
Gentrification and avoiding the downsides of development
Future of London has previously highlighted the importance of ensuring equity in investment decisions and collaborating with communities in the design and delivery of affordable housing. In our work on social value, we embraced the concept of legacy thinking.
We believe these principles are vital to developing homes fit for future generations so we reap the benefits of housebuilding and regeneration while minimising the unintended consequences.
Trust for London’s analysis of demographic data shows the negative impact of gentrification on low-income families – particularly Black families – in neighbourhoods across the city.
The analysis showed that although average income had risen little in London neighbourhoods between 2010 and 2020, some poorer neighbourhoods saw significant increases, such as Spitalfields (45%) and Aldgate (29%).
“We’re witnessing families and long-standing communities being priced out on a scale we haven’t seen before,” says Trust for London chief executive, Manny Hothi, who will deliver a keynote at the conference.
“If we want London to be a city where people from all backgrounds, of all ages, can live and thrive, urgent action is needed to address the affordability crisis.”
These findings show the unintended consequences of increased inequality that can flow from creating new homes. The trust’s analysis highlights the importance of focusing on types of housing and neighbourhoods to avoid making the mistakes of the past.
From multi-tenure development to true place integration
To develop the conference programme, we convened a steering group of housing experts to consider the big challenges and opportunities. We also drew on insights from our established housing skills development and peer support programmes.
Our steering group concluded that “integration” is the foremost issue in neighbourhoods, including household income, multi-generational living, and tenure types. All these are seen as essential to effective place-shaping and sustainability.
Multi-tenure development is widely thought to increase the chances of social mixing and community cohesion, though some academic studies question the evidence. The government also sees mixed tenure as a way to accelerate build-out and may soon require this approach for all sites with more than 500 homes.
Multi-tenure development helps to meet affordable homes targets, and many developers state their aim to create mixed communities. However some members of our steering group felt that more could be done to increase wider place-based social integration.
Managing housing legacies while building homes for the future
Most boroughs in London are considering the future of ageing housing stock that provides essential homes but fails to meet their ambitions for social, environmental and economic sustainability.
Thamesmead is a high-profile example of a new community that did not fulfil its original 1960s utopian dream. This place-making failure was due, in part, to a lack of transport links needed to create economic opportunities.
There’s a risk history that repeats itself. Thamesmead remains London’s only postcode without a direct rail link. Peabody is committing major investment to re-imagine the estate, in terms of development and community building. But, as the housing association acknowledges, the aim to create thousands of new jobs relies on a Docklands Light Railway (DLR) extension, whose funding is still not guaranteed.
Thamesmead is a large but not unique example of the past colliding with the present. London is still dealing with problems of social and economic exclusion stemming from housing decisions made 50 years ago. They still need to be addressed while the demand for new housing is met.
Council-led housebuilding had nearly come to a standstill by 2016. In-house development teams were reduced or disbanded, so learned experience is likely to have been lost.
The Housing Development Academy was set up by the Greater London Authority to address this skills gap. The current programme is meeting the growing demand from London boroughs for development skills in viability, commercial acumen, and strategic finance to help them address these challenges.
“There has been a very definite shift in demand from project delivery to approaches that can lever in private sector finance,” says Visakha Sri Chandrasekera, housing programmes director at Future of London.
Demand now makes long-term thinking harder
Building new neighbourhoods self-evidently impacts future generations. But the challenges are perhaps greater now than during previous intensive post-war housebuilding periods.
The crises of housing shortage and affordability create incentives to build quickly and cheaply. Our Health & Housing Impact Network worries that the prioritisation of better health outcomes will suffer as a result.
The London Plan consultation assumes continuing population growth will drive demand. One million more Londoners are expected to tip the population over 10 million by 2050. Housing demand will continue to increase.
Responding to London’s changing demography must be a major consideration in thinking about the kinds of homes we need for the future.
ONS household projections for 2018-2028 show London households increasing by nearly 8% in that decade. Growth stems from population increases (including net migration) and changes in household composition.
The increase in single-person households results from the ageing population (more people outliving partners) and lifestyle changes (young people choosing to live alone, or separations and divorces).
The increase in households with multiple adults without dependent children includes shared living for affordability reasons and empty nesters.
Creating climate-resilient homes for the future
We also face a climate emergency. As London sweltered and continental Europe racked up heatwave records, we saw the impact of climate change on homes and neighbourhoods.
Our steering group highlighted the importance of futureproofing new home designs to incorporate emerging green technologies through retrofit and new building.
Our Council-led Housing Network provides sustainability case studies that show local authorities developing homes beyond the required regulations, such as the Passivhaus projects at Beddington Lane and Woodcote Road in Sutton.
More could be done to ensure designs incorporate the latest heating and cooling systems, as we highlighted in our recent report on climate resilience.
The government’s approach to measuring the impact of housing
Unsurprisingly, the government’s guidance on evaluating public investment in housing focuses more on the benefits than the downsides of gentrification. But it does advise looking beyond measurable financial impacts such as rising house prices in the area – a clear indicator of gentrification!
The guidance draws on work by Homes England on social value, which developed a methodology for assessing “spillover” effects from investment in housing to the wider community. The resulting government guidance suggests that considering “equity” helps to measure the benefits experienced by people on lower incomes.
“Some things are excluded from economic output which impact on social welfare measures,” says the government guidance. “[For example] community wellbeing impacts which spillover from individual impacts and reflect greater social cohesion and greater levels of optimism.”
Conclusion: Stay focused on homes and neighbourhood
Although the government’s evaluation methodology remains primarily financial, it’s encouraging to see the its interest in equity and other harder-to-measure housing outcomes.
The national 1.5 million homes target for this parliament, which equates to about 350,000 for London in the same period, is necessary, clear and measurable. But these numbers must translate into actual homes located in socially, economically and environmentally sustainable neighbourhoods.
With the right approach, we can develop the homes Londoners need to thrive in the future. By focusing on community wellbeing, equity and sustainability, we have the best chance of creating homes and neighbourhoods that are properly fit for the future.
Our conference brings together leaders from across the public, private, not-for-profit and community sectors to consider practical ways to make that happen. So come along to develop insights and practical ideas so we can seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Hannah Gibbs is Deputy Chief Executive at Future of London and led the development of our conference, Homes for the Future.
Thanks to our valued sponsors who made the conference possible
Countryside Partnerships | Montagu Evans | Pollard Thomas Edwards | Trowers & Hamlins | Common Projects | Greengage Environmental | Ridge and Partners | Sheppard Robson
