Britain’s housing crisis has shredded the social contract

In Britain today, trust between the people and those who rule us is now on life support. The social contract – an implicit agreement between citizens and state, where the former obeys the laws of the latter in return for the provision of certain, basic needs – lies in tatters. Nothing illustrates the severity of this breakdown as clearly as the housing crisis.

We have long known that housing provision is an acute problem, yet successive governments have failed to act. Securing a safe and affordable place to live has become a fantasy for many. Now, in the UK, only two options can save you: to have immense family wealth, or prove to the state that you are desperate enough to deserve temporary accommodation. Even a council house has become a pipe-dream for most.

Recent reports lay bare the extent of the issue. In 2025, there is nowhere in England or Wales where the average rent would not take more than 30 per cent of the take-home pay for someone on the minimum wage. While the Labour government has made a big deal of its hikes in the minimum wage, any benefits of this will immediately be sucked up by housing costs.

When there is not one part of the country where a person working full-time on the minimum wage can live without falling into poverty, the social contract has been broken. The Low Pay Commission estimates that there are nearly two million workers at or below the minimum wage – two million people who have been condemned to an impossibly difficult life.

The housing crisis is often presented as a generational conflict, between wealthy boomers hoarding property as ‘Generation Rent’ struggles to get on the housing ladder. But this is a caricature. According to the housesharing site, SpareRoom, the number of people aged 45 to 55 looking for rooms to rent increased by more than 100 per cent between 2011 and 2021. It increased by an astonishing 239 per cent among those aged 55 to 65.

Immigration is undoubtedly one cause of the UK’s housing crisis and so it is no surprise to see it rising up the list of people’s concerns. When net migration reaches record levels – peaking at almost a million people in 2024 – then it is inevitable that housing supply will come under strain. But we should not let Britain’s lousy attitude to building things escape criticism. In recent years, governments have boasted about their housing targets at every opportunity. But they remain precisely that: targets, which are continually missed.

In recent years, poll after poll has found that people living in Britain think it is an unfair place to live. Many citizens feel as though their most basic needs are ignored, or at least unmet, by the state. Citizens feel abandoned to what 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes described as the ‘state of nature’.

Hobbes’s final resting place is Hucknall, Derbyshire, where the people voted for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in May’s local council elections. Hobbes would have understood why. Citizens have been left to fend for themselves.

The major parties, Labour and the Conservatives, have ripped the social contract to shreds. Having failed to uphold their end of the bargain, they can expect many more parts of the UK to go the way of Derbyshire. When the will and the needs of the people are so routinely ignored, things will not end well for those who have appointed themselves as our rulers.

Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic.