Council housing has recently come under the news spotlight. The shooting of teenager Billy Cox on a Clapham estate in south London only served to reinforce the image of all social housing as forgotten ghettos of wasted lives, dank stairwells and lurking danger.
John Hills' review of the future of social housing gave rise to a further stream of media headlines about the need to tackle neglected, monolithic estates which can trap people in a cycle of deprivation, low self-esteem and worklessness.
Shelter agrees that some estates do have major problems. Poor design and a lack of investment in some existing social housing, and the increasing rationing of what housing is available among those in the very greatest need, can compound or exacerbate social problems.
None of us can forget the BNP's exploitation of housing to boost their campaign in the May 2006 local elections. Together with real barriers to helping people move to find work, this can make it difficult for some tenants to gain skills and move into employment. Local authorities must use their planning powers and Section 106 orders to ensure that new social housing is not merely lumped alongside old estates where land is cheaper, but built among a proper mix of other tenures to create healthy, diverse communities.
Support and funding must be provided to improve conditions and give people opportunities to reach their full potential. But will this be enough? One thing Mr Hills conspicuously omitted to discuss is the desperate need to build more social homes in Britain. Even in the tough economic circumstances of 1966 we built 142,000 new social homes in England. In 2006 we managed little more than 20,000.
Decades of failure to build and the decimation of existing stock through ‘right to buy', together with spiralling property values which price many ordinary families out of private rental and ownership, mean there simply isn't enough affordable housing to go round.
The Government's solution is to price people into housing via shared ownership schemes. But shared equity will help only a handful of lucky, first-time buyers – barely making a dent in the wider problem – and only serve to drive up inflation further.
And with council house waiting lists topping 1.6m and more than 93,000 homeless households currently trapped in temporary accommodation, there is an urgent need to build more social housing.
Shelter is calling on the Government to commit to funding 20,000 additional social rented units each year to start tackling the crisis. The Hills review recognises the vital role social housing plays in providing many lower-income families with a secure and stable home. Mr Hills also points the way forward on tenants having every opportunity to better their circumstances, and correctly draws attention to aspects of social housing we desperately need to improve.
The report does question whether a permanent social tenancy is the best option for everyone who approaches their council for help – however, the worst fears about ending lifetime tenancies for current tenants seem not to have materialised. Shelter welcomes this, as we believe that any move by this or future administrations to end tenure for life would risk taking away one of the key benefits social housing offers tenants – the security and stability from which to build or rebuild their lives.
Design, investment and social mix are all crucial ingredients to successful social housing schemes. But ultimately, providing enough good-quality, secure social housing is the answer to, not the cause of, many of the problems which keep the devastating wheels of poverty and social deprivation in motion. n
Adam Sampson is chief  executive of Shelter