How Britain’s Housing Crisis Is Cutting Years of Healthy Life

Britain’s housing crisis is usually discussed through prices, rents, mortgages, homelessness, and supply. But the deeper cost is not only financial. It is physical, mental, and measured in years of healthy life lost.

The source argues that housing is one of the foundations of public health. When homes are unaffordable, insecure, cold, damp, overcrowded, or temporary, people are pushed into daily conditions that make illness more likely and recovery harder. Healthy life expectancy in the UK has fallen by around two years between 2012–14 and 2022–24, and housing is part of that wider decline.