“A National Scandal”: The Church of England Says Its 200,000 Acres Can Help Fix Housing

• An archbishops’ commission called England’s housing crisis a national scandal
• Its report found 8 million people live in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable homes
• The Church of England owns about 200,000 acres of land
• The report urged the Church to use that land for affordable homes

The Church of England should put its own land to work to ease a housing crisis that damages health, family life and communities, an archbishops’ commission concluded in February 2021. The Church Times reported on the findings of the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, whose report was titled Coming Home.

The commission said about 8 million people in England live in homes that are overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable, and that 11% of the existing housing stock is sub-standard. It set the problem against the government’s target of 300,000 new homes a year.

The Church is well placed to help. Taken together, it owns roughly 200,000 acres, and the Church Commissioners, who manage its investment fund, hold about 3% of their assets in land. The report called for that land to be used to deliver good, affordable homes rather than simply sold to the highest bidder.

The commission was chaired by Charlie Arbuthnot, with the Bishop of Kensington, Dr Graham Tomlin, as vice-chair. Arbuthnot stressed how bad housing feeds into problems with health, mental wellbeing and family stability: “This is all interconnected,” he said. Tomlin argued that the country is already paying for the crisis, but unequally: “It’s not like there isn’t a cost of the crisis now; but that cost is falling on a certain sector.” The Church had also just appointed Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani as its first Bishop for Housing.

For Jamaica, where churches are among the country’s significant landowners and housing remains out of reach for many families, the Coming Home approach is a useful model. It treats church land as a resource for the common good, tied to a clear strategy, rather than as idle lots or something to sell when money runs short. Jamaican denominations that map what they own, secure proper titles and partner with housing agencies could play a similar role in widening access to decent homes.

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