Overview
The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) is pioneering a mission-oriented, rights-based approach to housing policy, viewing secure, affordable, and sustainable housing as essential to public value creation. IIPP challenges the treatment of housing as a financial asset, advocating instead for models that prioritize social outcomes, long-term affordability, and environmental sustainability. Through empirical research and policy engagement, IIPP explores how public purpose can be re-centered in housing systems. By positioning housing within broader strategies for equity and climate justice, IIPP aims to reshape the housing landscape toward the common good.
Outputs
- Article: Meeting housing needs within planetary boundaries: A UK case study
Stefan Horn, Ian Gough, Charlotte Rogers, Rebecca Tunstall (April 2025) - Shelter essay: Rights-based, mission orientated housing for the common good (pdf)
Mariana Mazzucato (March 2025) - Policy report: The Demand for Housing as an Investment
Josh Ryan-Collins (October 2024) - Working paper: Modern Housing: An environmental common good
Dan Hill and Mariana Mazzucato (March 2024) - Working paper: The right to housing: A mission-oriented and human rights-based approach
Mariana Mazzucato and Leilani Farha (May 2023) - Book: Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing
Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd, Laurie Macfarlane, John Muellbauer (Foreward) (November 2022) - Article: A home for all within planetary boundaries: Pathways for meeting England's housing needs without transgressing national climate and biodiversity goals
Sophus O.S.E. zu Ermgassen, Michal P. Drewniok, Joseph W. Bull, Christine M. Corlet Walker, Mattia Mancini, Josh Ryan-Collins, André Cabrera Serrenho (November 2022) - Article: Breaking the housing–finance cycle: Macroeconomic policy reforms for more affordable homes
Josh Ryan-Collins (July 2019) - Book: Why Can't You Afford a Home?
Josh Ryan-Collins (November 2018)
- The Guardian:The UK’s housing market is hurting everyone. Time to rethink the whole thing
Josh Ryan-Collins (July 2023)
- Meeting housing needs within planetary boundaries requires opening the black box of housing “demand”
Stefan Horn (May 2024) - Barcelona’s housing mission: from a market-fixing to a market-shaping approach
Eduardo González de Molina (July 2022) - Could cap-and-auction resolve the UK housing crisis without blowing our net zero commitments?
Stefan Horn and Josh Ryan-Collins (November 2021) - Is it time to end our obsession with home ownership?
Laurie Macfarlane (June 2021) - When houses earn more than jobs: how we lost control of Australian house prices and how to get it back
Cameron Murray and Josh Ryan-Collins (August 2020) - Economic rent, land and housing (lecture)
Josh Ryan-Collins (February 2019) - The economics of land and what that means for Generation Rent
Brendan Maton (February 2019) - Why can’t you afford a home?
Josh Ryan-Collins (October 2018) - Cooperative communities: why we should have a stake in where we live
Jake Sumner (July 2018) - Land financialisation and rays of light amid the gloom
Josh Ryan-Collins (March 2018)
Our Director's impact and engagement
- Shelter Open Letter: Economists Call on UK Chancellor to Invest in Social Housing (2025)
- High-level session at UN-Habitat 2nd Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya (2023)
- La Biennale di Venezia’s 18th International Architecture Exhibition. ‘Governing, Designing and Educating Urban Futures’ (2023)
- ‘Shaping Equitable Urban Futures’ at the 11th World Urban Forum in Katowice, Poland (2022)
- Professor Mazzucato influenced Barcelona's ‘Right to Housing Plan 2016-2025', led by Mayor Ada Colau
- She also helped Camden Council to develop its missions, including their housing estates missions ‘By 2030, Camden’s estates and their neighourhoods are healthy, sustainable, and unlock creativity’
Projects
Homes that Don’t Cost the Earth
A network-building project mapping the policy, financial and technical interventions that can provide affordable homes for all, while protecting and enhancing our environment.