“The market is incapable of providing housing that’s affordable”

Reckford said: “Fundamentally, it’s a supply problem. If we build more housing, that’s anti-inflationary. If we only focus on the demand side, it’s actually exacerbating inflation and I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of it yet – you really can’t tackle inflation unless we address housing.”

The exact number of homes needed to address the problem is hotly contested, but according to Fannie Mae it’s about 3.8 million.

“We have been under building in the US really since the great recession of 2008-2009. What happened from our vantage point is that the big builders came back but the small builders didn’t – banks got very conservative and wouldn’t finance them,” added Reckford, who was named the most influential non-profit leader in America in 2017 by The Nonprofit Times.

Habitat for Humanity’s concept of partnership housing can be traced back to 1968, when it was founded by Millard and Linda Fuller. Its aim was to get people in need of adequate shelter to work with volunteers to build affordable homes at no profit.

From the outset, new homeowners’ house payments were combined with no-interest loans provided by supporters, and money earned by fundraising was then used to build more homes.