Here’s a simple (but in the current climate, seemingly radical) idea: the purpose of homes is for people to live in them. As long as we have buildings standing empty, there should be nobody sleeping on the streets, in hostels or flitting between friends’ sofas, being careful not to remain in the same place for too many nights and finding they’ve outstayed their welcome. As long as we have the capability to build more good-quality properties, nobody should be bedding down in poorly converted garages and sheds, or sharing family homes with more than 20 other people.

Children shouldn’t develop asthma, allergies and respiratory problems because the room they sleep in has damp and mould crawling up the walls, and because their parents are too scared to push the landlord to fix it for fear of being evicted. There should never have been a Grenfell Tower disaster. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it is within our capabilities to treat safe, secure housing as a basic right – not a luxury, denied to vast swaths of the population.

Property owners are increasingly deciding it’s not worth the risk to take on young people as tenants

Today, a report was released in which researchers at Sheffield Hallam University found that one third of landlords were cutting back on renting to under-35s. Because young people are more likely to be in insecure employment and, thanks to the last coalition government, are entitled to significantly lower levels of housing benefits, property owners are increasingly deciding it’s not worth the risk to take them on as tenants.

From a purely economic perspective, this makes total sense. In larger cities – where employment opportunities are likely to be more plentiful – demand for housing often significantly outstrips supply. Landlords can afford to be picky, so why wouldn’t they go with the tenants likely to be the lowest risk option? In terms of actual consequences, though, this is a disaster. The people in insecure situations are the ones least able to afford a place to live.

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme was welcomed by many council tenants who were understandably excited at the prospect of owning their own homes. Fast forward a few decades, and the negative repercussions of blithely selling off housing stock are all too apparent. Instead of replacing the properties sold, successive governments have happily overseen a shift away from social housing. An increase in owner-occupancy, yes, but in recent years also a massive spike in the number of households rented privately – particularly among people in their 20s and 30s.

Above all, houses are now assets. Foreign investors snap up premium properties in fashionable London postcodes as lucrative, failsafe investments. The personal finance sections of broadsheet newspapers advise affluent baby boomers to get into the buy-to-let market. Maximising returns means minimising costs: avoiding letting to “risky” tenants despite the fact they tend to be the ones most in need. Putting off repairs and upgrades for as long as you can get away with it. Hiking rents on the assumption that there will always be someone desperate enough to pay.

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Though there are regulations that could be introduced to improve the private rental sector – several of which were included in the recent Labour manifesto – maybe trying to reform a broken system isn’t enough. Perhaps it’s time to admit that treating homes as assets is fundamentally incompatible with broader social goals, and we need a radical rethink.

It’s perverse that our economy has become so reliant on spiralling housing prices that homes becoming more affordable is viewed as a negative thing by many. Ideally, we need to find a way to massively increase social housing stock while discouraging buy-to-let purchases – to remove the corrupting profit motive from the rental market. Alongside this, local councils must be forced to take their responsibilities seriously. From Haringey to Kensington and Chelsea, in recent months we’ve seen how frequently social tenants are treated as a nuisance – a barrier to partnerships with private developers and attempts to maximise revenues.

Many people aspire to own their own homes, and a less over-inflated housing market would make that possible for greater numbers of us. But if renting was more affordable and secure – and properties were adequately sized and properly maintained – we might not be quite so desperate to escape.