Last month, the housing and homelessness charity Shelter launched their new Living Home Standard which aims to be the housing equivalent of the Living Wage. It outlines the minimum requirements that should be expected of a home in order to secure wellbeing and provide a secure foundation from which people can live and build their lives.
The standard can be found here.
The Standard has been developed through extensive research including a series of discussion groups, workshops and quantitative surveys. This research has culminated in the production of a set of 39 attributes which make up the Living Home Standard which fall into the five key areas of affordability, space, stability, decent conditions and neighbourhood.
According to research undertaken by Ipsos Mori on behalf of Shelter, 4 in 10 homes in Britain do not meet the Living Homes Standard. The majority of those failing fall into the private rental sector. However, 68% of Local Authority homes also fail the Standard, as do 66% of Housing Association homes.
Shelter’s report is released shortly after the launch of the UK Green Building Council’s report Health and Wellbeing in Homes, for which we were a key contributor. It serves to highlight the importance of the health and wellbeing impacts of buildings, in addition to the issues of sustainability and quality of homes in the UK.
