What is a housing association?

Housing associations in the UK are independent not-for-profit bodies that provide low-cost "social housing" for people in housing need. Any trading surplus is used to maintain existing homes and to help finance new ones. Housing associations are now the UK's major providers of new homes for rent, while many also run shared ownership schemes to help people who cannot afford to buy their own homes outright.

There are over 1,800 housing associations in England, currently managing around 1.7million homes and housing at least twice that many people.

In England, housing associations are funded and regulated by the Housing Corporation, a non-departmental public body that reports to the Department for Communities and Local Government; who sponsors the Housing Corporation to invest public money in housing associations and protects that investment by ensuring that it provides decent homes and services for residents.

Housing associations provide a wide range of housing including managing large estates of housing for families, and smaller schemes of housing for older people. The investment received must provide homes that meet local needs. Through regulation, the Housing Corporation seeks to ensure that people will want, and be able, to live in these homes, now and in the future.

In England, the National Housing Federation represents housing associations.

Much of the supported accommodation in the UK is also provided by Housing associations, with specialist projects for people with mental health or learning disabilities, with substance misuse problems (drugs or alcohol), the formerly homeless, young people, ex-offenders and women fleeing domestic violence.