If Britain chooses to stay in the EU, the government must then embark on a mass house-building programme

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Each year, around 10 per cent of the entire spending on welfare by the UK government is spent on housing benefit: for comparison, that’s 10 times the amount spent on unemployment benefits, and a quarter of what is spent on pensions, which represents the bulk of social security expenditure. The vast majority of housing benefit is paid to private landlords, by people who are in work, but not earning enough to afford a roof over their head without government assistance. Even relatively affluent young professionals find home ownership is out of their reach without considerable parental help: the question of what happens in turn when increasing numbers of people reach retirement age having re-mortgaged to help their children buy homes looms ever closer and further threatens our shaky economy. The cost of homelessness, housing benefit and poor housing is incalculable: building more social housing cuts down the housing benefit bill, provides rent which is reinvested in the community by the local authorities that own the homes, and majorly reduces the financial cost resulting from poor mental and physical health when families are forced to live in poor housing.