The UK's social housing scheme was/is a stonking success, right up until about 1980. it completely reset the minimum standard of housing from slums to actually decent. It wasn't all a success, skelmersdale and thamesmede sucked balls.
The problem with the uk's social housing came as follows:
1) the change from needing a job to have a council house to being a dumping ground for troubled families without support
2) removing the ability of councils to fund new housing
3) overly complex centralised funding of repairs and upkeep
4) selling off housing and then taking the money away that was needed to replace them
I don't know the UK situation in much depth but one of the things I read was how they were disconnected from the rest of the community (socially, services, transport, etc).
southwark has the most council estates. the further out boroughs did try and put their estates far out. Places like thamesmede (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamesmead) failed because there was literally nothing else around (thats improved significantly, 50 years later)
Mixed use. And also mixing all types of social, free-market rental and owner occupied. Quality for later two could be better, but it should still be next to each other using same services.
