(note: Z2K Housing Review was previously The Zacchaeus Housing Review)

The complexities of the welfare system often create rent arrears for the vulnerable debtors we serve; so how to deal with these is part of our McKenzie Friend course and an essential part of our lobbying for minimum income standards because the payment of arrears out of poverty incomes damages the well being of many individuals and families.  

When we were researching minimum incomes, it became clear that housing for people receiving the lowest incomes is unaffordable for them and increasingly expensive for the tax payer in Housing Benefit payments which have increased from £5.4 billion in 1986/7 to £19.7 billion in 2007/8. This led us to produce the Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Housing, co-edited by Professor Peter Ambrose of the Health and Social Policy Research Centre the University of Brighton, which was sent to the Prime Minister in May 2005.

In the summer of 2008, Professor Peter Ambrose together with Jack Adams from the Human Rights TV, started producing “The Zacchaeus Housing Review”, also known as The Z2K Housing Review, an on line video Journal that will appear on this site and on Human Rights TV dedicated to exploring and promoting ideas around housing policy in the United Kingdom.

The four-part film 'No Place Like Home' forms an introduction to the Review. This film grows out of, and adds to, the structural analysis and critique of housing policy contained in the Z2K Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Housing.

The review will be published quarterly with a first edition in April 2009. It will contain up to date information, comment, discussion and proposals from experts, policy makers, academics and professionals in the field of housing. The ambition is to create a dynamic locus for debate that will provide decision makers with informed choices and that will encourage more holistic and strategic thinking about housing policy development than has been evident in recent decades. It will also be a resource for those studying housing issues at FE and HE levels."

Human Rights and Housing