Universal access to affordable, decent and secure housing involves much more than bricks and mortar. Public bodies and local communities must be properly resourced and empowered to ensure that housing stock is high quality, environmentally sustainable, and integrated with the transport links, amenities and spaces for recreation that bind communities together. It calls for stronger tenants' rights, an end to treating land and homes as financial assets, and a housing development model that responds to local needs. We can learn from Germany about sustainable housing, Austria about land ownership and socially mixed communities, Denmark about co-operative models of ownership and the Netherlands about rent cost control.