By Lord John Bird MBE, founder of the Big Issue.

I was born in 1946 in the slums of Notting Hill and grew up falling in and out of homelessness – sadly, a life not unusual for someone living in the sixth richest nation in the world.

As one of the lucky ones who managed to break out of the system, I’ve developed a personal commitment to ensure that our housing system is improved, for good.

As the co-founder of The Big Issue, I’ve spent the past 30 years lifting people out of homelessness, but I want to spend the next 30 years preventing people from falling into homelessness in the first place. That’s why I’ve introduced a Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill into the House of Lords.

This bill has prevention and long-term thinking at its core.

Modelled off the Welsh Act (2015), it’s a bill which would re-imagine our social housing system. With preventative spending at its heart, it looks beyond the inertia of five-year election cycles and places the emphasis on the long term.

And a long-term plan is needed nowhere more urgently than in the housing sector, which is why I’m calling upon all social housing providers to join me on this journey and throw their weight behind this bill, which would safeguard future generations.

The bill – which came first in the House of Lord’s Private Member’s Bill ballot, therefore giving it the highest chance of success in this Parliamentary session – would reimagine social housing policy which currently suffers from severe siloisation.

By legislating for joined up thinking, it would ensure that social housing has adequate green space, communal space for growing food, and other creative solutions.

The bill’s provisions are designed to change the way policymaking works through the pursuit of national goals (drawn up through public consultation) and future generations impact assessments. It’ll also, for the first time, establish preventative spending as a category of spend in and of itself.

We can’t find ways to prevent bad things happening, whether that’s families falling into homelessness, rising sea levels or future pandemics, if we don’t have a clear understanding of what’s coming down the road.

Additionally, we cannot ignore the fact that tackling these issues separately is poor policymaking, which will lead to costly unintended consequences.

That’s why our bill commits the government to publish a yearly futures and forecasting report, setting out the long-term trends across the economy, society, environmental and culture. We firmly believe that long-term thinking is joined-up thinking.

The bill also introduces a UK-wide commission on future generations, which will keep a beady eye on progress to ensure future generations remain at the heart of policymaking.

Our ‘proof of concept’ commission has been established to show what good looks like. This is a UK-wide effort, in which we must work together and learn from best practice at a national, regional and local level, and across generations and cultures.

This bill has already received support from members of parliament of eight different political parties because whatever your ideology, the shortcomings of short-term politics isn’t lost on anyone.

As a cross-party piece of legislation, it has provided the vision for building up our national infrastructure and it’s up to us to put this work into action.

I would therefore implore you, and all other organisations across the housing sector to join me on this journey by committing your organisation’s support to our Today for Tomorrow campaign.