Social housing is supposed to provide secure, affordable homes for people who need them most. But under new proposals from Reform UK, being married could become one of the things that moves you further up the queue.

The party has announced plans to overhaul the way social housing is allocated in England, with British-born workers under 35 given priority and additional preference for married couples with children. Veterans would also be prioritised, while people who are unemployed and some other groups would effectively find themselves further down the queue.

Asked directly whether a married British couple would be prioritised over a single British person, Reform deputy leader Richard Tice said: “Yes, that is the preference,” adding that families were “a good thing”. He has also said that, “in an ideal world”, couples with children would be married and that the policy is deliberately intended to promote marriage.

For single parents, that raises an obvious and uncomfortable question.

Should the state really decide that one type of family is more deserving of a secure home than another – particularly when the evidence suggests single-parent families are among those most in need of housing support?

What exactly is Reform proposing?

The plans are proposals rather than current law, and this distinction matters. Nothing has changed about anyone's entitlement to social housing as a result of the announcement. Reform says it wants at least half of social homes to be reserved for British-born workers under 35, alongside preferential treatment for groups including married couples with children and veterans. The party has also proposed excluding foreign nationals from social housing and has pledged to increase the supply of affordable homes.

Tice has explicitly linked the married-couple preference to a desire to encourage marriage. Speaking about the proposals, he argued that marriage should be promoted because people enter into it hoping that it will last. That takes the debate beyond the question of how we distribute an extremely scarce resource. It introduces a judgement about what sort of family structure government policy should reward.

And that's particularly significant for single parents because social housing is not currently allocated as a prize for conforming to a particular family model. Its fundamental purpose is to meet housing need.

How is social housing allocated now?

Councils have their own allocation schemes, but they don't have complete freedom to decide who gets a home. Under the Housing Act 1996, local authorities in England must give “reasonable preference” to particular groups of people in housing need. These include people who are homeless, people living in overcrowded or otherwise unsatisfactory housing, and people who need to move on medical or welfare grounds.

In other words, the broad principle is need.

That's important because there simply aren't enough social homes to go around. More than 1.3 million households were on social housing waiting lists in England in 2025. Shelter calculates that just 12,198 social rent homes were delivered in 2024/25. At the average rate of delivery over the previous two years, it would take 119 years to provide a social home for every household currently waiting.

This is the context in which any discussion about who should be pushed up or down the queue has to take place.

Single parents aren't a marginal group in social housing

One of the most striking statistics in this debate is how many social homes currently go to single-parent families. Government figures show that 22% of all new social housing lettings in England in 2024/25 went to single-adult households with children. Of the single parents receiving a new social letting, 92% were women. By comparison, just 14% of new social housing lettings contained a couple.

That doesn't tell us that single parents are being unfairly favoured by the current system. Quite the opposite: it tells us something important about housing need.

Single parents have one household income rather than two, while still needing enough space to house their children. They have less flexibility around childcare and working hours and are particularly exposed to high rents and other increases in the cost of living. The latest government child poverty analysis found that 41% of children in single-parent families live in relative low income. Even more strikingly, 27% of children in single-parent families experience deep material poverty – three times the rate among children living with couple parents.

Gingerbread reports that 66% of single parents are in employment, challenging any easy assumption that housing need among single parents is simply about not working. It also reports that 43% of children in single-parent families live in poverty, compared with 26% of children in couple families, while 36% of single-parent families with dependent children have no savings, compared with 17% of couple families.

This matters because secure, genuinely affordable housing can provide the foundation that makes everything else – employment, childcare, education and financial stability – easier to manage.

Single parents are already disproportionately at risk of homelessness

Perhaps the strongest argument against moving away from a needs-based system comes from the homelessness statistics. Shelter's analysis of government data found that 70,630 single-parent households faced homelessness in England during 2024/25. That's approximately one in every 28 single-parent families. Overall, single-parent families were almost four times as likely to be homeless or threatened with homelessness as two-parent families.

Meanwhile, the latest figures show that 177,530 children are living in temporary accommodation in England, the highest number since records began. The number has risen for 18 consecutive reporting periods. Against that background, prioritising married couples regardless of comparative housing need raises serious questions.

Imagine two families needing the same three-bedroom social home. One consists of two married adults with two children. The other is a mum who has left an abusive relationship with her two children, or a dad bringing up his children alone after his partner has died, or simply a parent whose relationship has broken down and who can no longer afford private rent.

Should the marriage certificate belonging to the first family have any relevance? Under a system based principally on housing need, the circumstances of those families matter. Under a system designed explicitly to promote marriage, marital status potentially starts to matter too.

What about parents who have left relationships?

This is perhaps one of the biggest problems with presenting marriage as evidence that someone is “doing the right thing”. Single parenthood isn't one experience. People become single parents through separation, bereavement, abandonment and domestic abuse. Some have chosen solo parenthood. Others spent decades married before their relationship ended. Some co-parent equally; some receive little practical or financial support from their child's other parent.

A policy that rewards current marital status can't distinguish between those stories.

There is a particular concern around domestic abuse. One of the purposes of housing and homelessness legislation is to provide protection for people who need to leave unsafe homes, and the government's current Social Housing Bill specifically includes measures intended to give social tenants who are victims of domestic abuse greater security and stability.

At the same time, the government has recently consulted on strengthening the rights of the UK's more than 3.5 million unmarried couples, explicitly acknowledging that family life has changed and that existing law doesn't always reflect modern relationships. It would be a strange contradiction for housing policy to move in the opposite direction, attaching greater value to one particular relationship status.

Would these proposals actually solve the housing crisis?

This is the other crucial part of the debate. Changing the order of a waiting list doesn't make the waiting list shorter.

Crisis has criticised Reform's proposals on precisely these grounds, arguing that the fundamental problem is the shortage of genuinely affordable social housing. The charity says research indicates that England needs around 90,000 new social homes every year to tackle homelessness.

The current government programme says at least 60% of homes funded through its 2026–36 Social and Affordable Homes Programme should be for social rent. But the scale of the existing shortage is enormous. In 2024/25 there were 263,000 new social housing lettings, but 86% of these were relets of existing homes; only a small proportion represented newly built housing.

There are legitimate political arguments to be had about how we build more social housing, how it should be funded and who should qualify for it. But when 1.3 million households are already waiting, deciding that one struggling family should simply move ahead of another struggling family doesn't create a home. It changes who loses out.

What can single parents do?

For now, it's important not to panic. These proposals are not law and the current rules have not changed. If you are on a housing register, homeless or at risk of homelessness, don't assume this announcement affects your current rights or stop you asking your council for help.

If you feel strongly about the proposal, however, this is exactly the point at which speaking up can matter. You can write to your MP, regardless of which party they represent, and ask specifically whether they support social housing being allocated according to marital status. Shelter has guidance on contacting MPs and campaigns nationally for more social housing.

You can also follow organisations including Shelter, Crisis and Gingerbread, which campaign on housing, homelessness and single-parent poverty and are likely to scrutinise any detailed proposals as they develop.

If you're currently facing homelessness or worried that you may lose your home, don't wait for the political debate to play out. Contact your local council's housing or homelessness team and get independent housing advice. Shelter provides advice and template letters for people who need to make a homelessness application or challenge a council decision.

Single-parent families don't need to prove that they're the “right” kind of family

There's a bigger issue here than one housing policy. More than three million children – around 24% of all children – live in lone-parent families, according to government analysis. Nearly half of all children experiencing deep material poverty are in lone-parent families. These aren't fringe or unusual families. They're families.

Housing policy inevitably involves difficult choices when demand dramatically exceeds supply. But those choices should surely begin with the question “Who needs this home most?”, not “Are the parents married?” For the single parents already juggling rent, childcare, work and the enormous practical responsibility of being the only adult in their household, secure housing isn't a reward for making the right lifestyle choices.

It's a home.

And children shouldn't have less chance of one because of the relationship status of their parents.

If this story has left you worried or angry, you don't have to process it alone. Download the Frolo app to connect with other single parents, share experiences and find support from people who understand the realities of raising children as a single-parent family.

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