IT HAS been 100 years since Britain first began providing social housing on a large scale.

Back then, the vision was there, the commitment was there, but today we are failing people who need a home.

Our social housing stock is shrinking, renting is unaffordable, and buying a home is completely out of reach for many people, especially in cities like Brighton.

This is a national scandal.

Every week I hear from constituents in desperate need because they don’t have a secure home. And no wonder.

There are more than 15,000 people on the housing waiting list in the city, and the median house price is £375,000. That is nearly 12 and a half times the median salary.

This doesn’t just mean mortgages are unaffordable. It affects private rents too.

People are paying vast chunks of their pay packet in rent, leaving very little for anything else.

More and more people are sofa-surfing or sleeping rough on our streets.

Green councillors have been pushing for years for a year-round night shelter, which was finally agreed in February.

Yet it still hasn’t opened. Brighton and Hove City Council tells me it should partly open by the end of November.

Too many families in Brighton are living in temporary or emergency housing, which is often privately owned.

So the council is paying huge amount of money to private landlords for often very sub-standard accommodation, or to fund B&B accommodation for vulnerable people.

When people say they feel safer sleeping on the streets than in the temporary accommodation provided by the council, serious questions need to be asked about the quality of what is being offered.

This emergency accommodation should be brought in-house. It would be more cost-effective in the long-term and there would be greater accountability over safety.

We need radical action to tackle this housing crisis.

That means a huge expansion in social housing and rent controls and ending the right to buy, a policy which has transferred a huge public asset into private hands, often at a generous discount.

This should apply to public land as well.

Too often land available for housing is sold to a private developer, who then builds homes beyond the reach of those who need them. There is a risk of that happening on land owned by Brighton General Hospital.

The land should be put into community land trusts, given to housing co-ops or other self-help groups to build their own homes and create their own communities.

But there are more immediate actions the Government should take which could make a real difference to my constituents who write to me about their housing issues.

It should end the five-week wait for Universal Credit, which pushes people into food poverty and rent arrears.

Or they could ensure the Local Housing Allowance, which sets housing benefit levels, actually makes it possible to rent a home in Brighton.

It should also take steps to end the discrimination by mortgage lenders, letting agents and landlords against people receiving benefits.

A roof over your head at night is a fundamental human right, and we are failing people in denying that right to so many.

But this is not just about numbers.

The quality of our housing is not good enough.

I often hear stories from people who have to put up with damp, leaky homes.

Thousands of people across Brighton and Hove are struggling to keep themselves warm.

Every single home in Britain, whoever owns it, should be made energy-efficient.

That could mean solar panels on every suitable house and public building.

Or it could mean a mass insulation scheme across the country.

Both would create jobs, cut heating bills, and help address the climate crisis.

This has always been one of the key proposals in the Green Party’s Green New Deal, a programme for investment to create jobs, reduce inequality and build a fairer and more sustainable society.

We are at a critical moment in our history.

We face a choice of staying with the climate-wrecking, socially-divisive, neoliberal ideas of the past or creating a new society that delivers healthier lives and a better future for our planet.

Providing decent homes and tackling the climate emergency... it is possible to do both.

But first, we need to win the climate election.