The Church of England is set to create a national housing association that will look to tackle the housing crisis and become a major provider of social housing.
Today’s announcement comes more than a year after a commission set up by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby published a report titles Coming Home: Tackling the Housing Crisis Together, which set out how the church could do more to help tackle the housing crisis.


The report concluded that the Church of England must make more use of its land to deliver affordable housing. It was first reported by Inside Housing that the Housing Association was likely to be formed.
It was published shortly after Bishop of Loughborough Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani was appointed as the Church of England’s first Bishop for Housing.
On today’s announcement, Bishop Guli said: “This degree of social change – which we could think of as ‘levelling up’, rooted in the visions and values we derive from our faith – requires more land and buildings than we currently have, and it needs to be deliverable to every part of the country. If we only develop housing on the land we currently own, we’ll never bring about the justice we long to see, nor will it be enough to turn the tide of the current housing crisis.
“That’s why we are proposing to set up a Church Housing Association which will enable us to deliver housing, social change and ministry funding beyond the realms of our existing inheritance into more marginalised areas where the need is greatest.”


Alan Smith, first church estates commissioner, said that church commissioners are already delivering 30,000 new homes, from 60 sites across England, of which 9,000 will be affordable.
He said that the church “wants to start digging beneath that” and “begin to push into areas of affordable housing where there is a big gap, and where the truly vulnerable are not being served right now”.
Benjamin Preece Smith, leader of the team following up the Coming Home report and diocesan secretary for the Diocese of Gloucester, said that his local church has already been working for change, with 400 homes being allocated in the local plans, of which 40% are affordable.
The diocese is also investing in pods to temporarily house vulnerable people on land that has been earmarked for development, he said.
Archbishop Justin said: “The priority of the housing crisis is getting worse rather than better because of high levels of inflation and very rapidly rising levels of poverty, with incomes rising far below the level of inflation, and the likelihood of recession – all these have put enormous pressure on housing. If you’re building a more just society, housing is one of the main building blocks.”