“How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1John 3:17)

What is the 'Coming Home' report?

Coming Home: Tackling the Housing Crisis Together is a report which was published in 2021, and was the key output of the The Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community (which itself was launched in April 2019). The report itself is over 100 pages; however, there is also an executive summary available (17 pages).

As well as making recommendations to e.g. government and those in the housing market, it also looked at how local churches (and the National Church) could help to tackle the housing crisis.

A key takeaway was the “Five S’s”, that is, the 5 core values of what all homes should be:

  • Sustainable – building homes which work in harmony with nature is an essential part of our calling as stewards of God’s good creation. 
  • Safe – every home should provide decent, secure accommodation and be a place where people feel protected against unwanted intrusion. 
  • Stable – good housing policy should provide affordable homes and secure tenancies, enabling people to settle for the long term and put down roots with their families. 
  • Sociable – homes should be conducive to hospitality and fellowship, and providing shared facilities and meeting spaces encourages relationships between neighbours to grow. 
  • Satisfying – communities are more than clusters of homes – the architecture, design and technology must work together to create places where people delight to live.

(Source – Coming Home report — Church Housing)

Other key recommendations and actions (page 16, Executive Summary) for the Church of England included:

  • A General Synod motion to recognise housing and communities as part of the mission and ministry of the Church of England – this was backed in July 2021.
  • Appointing a Lead Bishop for Housing – Bishop Guli Frances-Dehqani was appointed to this role.
  • Actions specifically for the Church Commissioners – including to “set an example
    to other landowners by favouring new developments on its land that align with the
    Commission’s five core values [Five S’s]”.
  • For diocese and local churches specifically:
    • Training for clergy, lay activists etc on how to engage with matters of housing
    • Encouragement to engage with preventative community work
    • Creation of resources such as interactive maps, Bible study notes and videos to support this work

What happened next?

In 2022, the Church Housing Foundation [CHF] was launched; highlights from the conference can be viewed here.

CHF was set up “to advance the Church’s mission to respond to the housing crisis and meet housing need among the poorest and most marginalised”. It does this in a number of ways, including providing case studies, resources and bringing together information on a variety of projects and organisations under one website, including:

The CHF also runs occasional webinars – you can sign up to their newsletter here for announcements of the next event

Pause for Thought...

The Church can bear its witness to the gospel by building houses and housing developments that explicitly seek to display the elements we have seen emerging from the narrative arc of Scripture: housing that is sustainable, secure, stable, sociable and satisfying.

(Coming Home: A Theology of Housing, p.14)