Yes. There is a crisis in social housing.

Unusually, I woke up on Saturday morning to hear the BBC's Breakfast programme running a story about social housing. Spurred by newish local authority figures showing that more than 11,000 households joined housing waiting lists in the third quarter of last year, the BBC had assembled an impressive roster of figures, all of whom agreed there is too little social housing.

Even housing minister Grant Shapps was persuaded to utter the word 'crisis', although that is far easier when you've been in government for less than a year. David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, had left his tie at home as if to demonstrate that it was Saturday, but otherwise explained decisively where the fault lay.

For, without wishing to let Shapps or his party completely off the hook, there is little doubt that Labour's failure to build sufficient social or low-cost housing in the years prior to the credit crunch and recession has mostly created the situation we are in now.

The last set of English local authority housing statistics showed there were 1.75m households awaiting a council or housing association home last April and it will be a major surprise if that figure does not rise by April 2011.

At the same time, government figures in December showed that councils are dealing with more cases of homelessness, and predicted that, shortly, there will be more families living in temporary accommodation.

So where do we go from here? Grant Shapps may be a fairly media-friendly politician but, in truth, it is hard to find anyone in the housing sector that believes the coalition government sees housing as a priority, or that it has credible plans to boost the amount of social or affordable housing available.

Too much depends on the market, or even the whim of local people. There is the 'new homes bonus', which essentially consists of bribing councils to approve development in return for extra council tax, along with the 'right to build', encouraging communities to come up with their own local housing schemes. Neither is likely to result in a significant increase in social housing.

Instead, much rests upon whether housing associations (in the first instance) opt to provide new homes at higher (or what the government calls 'affordable') rents with shorter-term tenancies. If they do, the proceeds could be used to pay for further housing. We will know by April whether this option has many takers, but don't hold your breath for quick results. In the meantime, numbers waiting for social housing can only increase.