UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY - INSIGHTS 2025

This conference aims to bring together policymakers, industry experts, housing professionals, civil society organisations and academics to explore the interconnections between housing, incomes and household behaviours and the impact on health, wealth inequality, and climate change.

The government has an ambition to make housing more affordable and decent by aiming to build 1.5m new homes, investing in a Warm Homes Plan, improving stability and security in private rental sector, and maintaining social housing stock. Housing is central to the government’s growth mission. Land supply, planning reforms and more public and private investment are vital, with investment needed in areas with major housing-affordability issues and long waiting lists. But the housing crisis, combined with asset price and rental inflation over the years, is generating much wider and deeper economic and social ramifications for young people, families and communities.

Housing, health and wealth should not be seen as separate aspects of a good life. In the growing debate about the feasibility of meeting the house building target and turning around economic inequality, limited policy attention has been paid to the pivotal role of how housing itself sits at the centre of a range of opportunities and disparities.

Given the critical importance of addressing overlapping societal challenges, what is the growing evidence on housing and its wider welfare effects in human terms? How is the housing crisis harming public health according to new research? Which households and residents are responsible for disproportionately high levels of carbon emissions, and given the exceedingly poor sustainability of old housing stock, what action is needed? How can housing policy, new developments and regulation be combined with other policies to tackle affordability and generate better societal outcomes? Are there key trade-offs?

The event will cover a number of themes:

• Housing, affordability and growing inequality in wealth
• Housing and health, with a focus on mental health
• House prices, lifestyles and carbon emissions

Understanding Society will also be launching it Insights 2025 Report at the event. This provides the latest findings on housing related issues based on the Study’s long-term data.

09.30 – 10.00 REGISTRATIONS & REFRESHMENTS

10.00 – 10.10 WELCOME & INTRODUCTIONS

10.10 – 10.50 KEYNOTE SPEAKER: HOUSING AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE FUTURE

Professor Susan Smith, Honorary Professor of Social & Economic Geography, University of Cambridge and previously Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge

10.50 – 11.20 TACKLING CHILD POVERTY THROUGH AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Lindsay Judge, Research Director, Resolution Foundation

11.20 – 11.40 REFRESHMENT BREAK

11.40 – 12.00 HOUSING AND PEOPLE’S CHANGING LIVES

Dr Rory Coulter, Associate Professor in Human Geography, Department of Geography, University College London

12.00 – 13.00 HOUSING AND PUBLIC HARM: A MATTER OF HEALTH

What tenures provide mental health protection? Comparing the UK and Australia

Professor Rebecca Bentley, Principal Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology, Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, University of Melbourne

Tenures, ageing, cold homes and mental health

Dr Amy Clair, Lecturer and Deputy Director, Australian Centre for Housing Research, School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide

What are the effects of sustained exposure to housing affordability problems?

Dr Jennifer Dykxhoorn, Principal Research Fellow / Associate Professor, University College London

13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH AND NETWORKING

14.00 – 14.50 HOUSEHOLD BEHAVIOURS AND CARBON EMISSIONS

How is rising housing wealth changing energy consumption?

Professor Helen Bao, Professor of Urban Economics & Public Policy, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge

Household or individual carbon emissions? Differentiating the drivers

Dr Ting Liu, Research Associate, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London

14.50 – 15.10 REFRESHMENT BREAK

15:10 – 16.30 DEBATE – THE ROAD AHEAD FOR HOUSING AND COMMUNITIES

An interactive discussion on the direction for housing and other policies, reflecting on the day’s themes:

Andrew Carter, Chief Executive, Centre for Cities

Branwen Evans, Group Director, Sustainability and Policy, Places for People

David O’Leary, Executive Director, House Builders Federation

Liz Emerson, Chief Executive Officer/Co-Founder, Intergenerational Foundation

16.30 – 17.30 REFRESHMENTS AND NETWORKING

British Academy 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH

Host or Publisher Understanding Society