Sustainable social housing provision (SSHP) has become very important over the last few decades for the main objective of meeting housing needs. Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that SSHP has not been practiced successfully. A growing body of the literature shows that lack of an acceptable definition of social housing could contribute to the lack of political will for achieving SSHP. The overall aim of this research is to develop 'a framework for implementing SSHP'. The aim was achieved through research objectives, including a critical review of the concept and identification of types of social housing and proposes a definition for describing it; examine the concept of sustainable development (SD) and its requirements for achieving sustainability in social housing provision (SHP); and examine the key constituents, barriers and recommendations for improving SSHP from economic, environmental and social perspectives. The methodology adopted for this research comprises a combination of the review of the extant literature, a qualitative content analysis and a quantitative questionnaire survey.