Homesick

How Housing Broke London and How to Fix It

What – and who – is a city for?

From the author of the Orwell Prize-winner SHOW ME THE BODIES: HOW WE LET GRENFELL HAPPEN, the gripping story of how housing defines a city's past, present and future

A Waterstones Book of the Year 2025

'Apps set the gold standard with his Grenfell coverage. With Homesick, he dismantles the sham of UK housing policy – razor-sharp, stylish, and morally unflinching.' Darren McGarvey

In London, only those with vast cash deposits can get on the property ladder, private rents have spiralled out of control and the wait for social housing is measured in decades. Once vibrant communities are being uprooted, schools are closing down and homelessness is rampant.

It was not always like this. In the 1980s, builders and nurses could afford family-sized homes, there was abundant social housing and long-term security for private renters.

Tracing the last forty years of housing policy, Peter Apps examines this transformation, following a diverse group of Londoners as their fortunes rise and fall across the decades amid the economic forces sweeping through the city. With clear-eyed urgency, he reveals what will happen when a generation of renters retires and climate change brings fire and flood to a city unprepared for extremes.

He also gives us reason to hope, exploring the ways London can transform again: from a market for private profit to a place that once more offers permanence, safety and opportunity for its citizens. A place to call home.

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