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ABOUT THE MANCHESTER SOCIAL HOUSING COMMISSION
The Manchester Social Housing Commission ran from July 2024 to December 2025.
It brought together social housing tenants, grassroots community organisations, senior public and voluntary sector leaders, housing and planning professionals, academics, housing campaigners, as well as politicians and officers at Manchester City Council, for a shared purpose: to achieve accelerated delivery of ecologically sustainable housing for social rent in the City of Manchester by 2030.
The Commission was created by the Social Homes for Manchester (SH4M) coalition, a network of community and voluntary sector organisations in the city.
SH4M was formed in 2023 with the aim of building a city-wide movement for housing justice. Local communities in Manchester had seen enough of ‘luxury’ high-rise towers being erected across the city’s skyline whilst records were being broken for levels of homelessness and children living long-term in poor quality temporary accommodation.
For them, the answer was obvious: it was time for a new generation of social rent homes, built in response to evidenced need not profit, with rents set in proportion to local incomes, and tenancies let on a secure, lifetime basis.
SH4M also saw the climate and cost of living crises as critical aspects of the housing emergency and that retrofitting existing stock whilst building homes with better insulation and on-site renewable energy would reduce both carbon emissions and people’s energy bills.
Importantly, the Commission comprised one third Community Commissioners: residents with direct experience of the housing crisis who in most cases have spent decades organising to protect their community’s right to the city.
All of the Commission's reports and outputs are available on the Publications page.
The Manchester Social Housing Commission was funded by a variety of organisations, including through Impact Acceleration Awards at the Universities of Leeds, Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and by the Lloyds Local Collaborations programme. The views expressed in the reports are not necessarily endorsed by these institutions and these institutions can accept no responsibility for views or information published by the Commission.
Publications reflect the views and position of the Commission as a collective. Individual Commissioners and partner organisations may publish or advocate for proposals that diverge from the Commission’s collectively agreed position or policy recommendations.
The Commissioners would like to thank the following organisations for their support, without which the Manchester Social Housing Commission would not have been possible: