Housing 'huge opportunity for pension funds Today the Future Homes Commission will argue that if local authority pension funds invested £10bn of their assets (15%) in building new housing, it would end the house crisis and add 3% to GDP. Sir John Banham, chair of the commission explained he saw this a chance to end the housing crisis and add a huge boost to the economy: "This is a huge opportunity for pension funds to earned the kind of 10% returns that currently they can only dream about" He went on to call for decisive action by local authority pension funds. Sir Merrick Cockell, chair of the Local Government Association (LGA) pointed out that he is not opposed to the idea of more investment but questioned whether this would be practical saying that they may not be prepared to take the risk to invest in housing: "Pensions funds want that safe return... they don't want the construction risks."