Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
Trump orders homeless people he passed en route to golf course to leave Washington DC
Robert Mackey The Guardian (No paywall)In a social media post on Sunday, Donald Trump has demanded homeless residents of Washington DC leave the country’s capital or face eviction, and again promised to use federal officers to jail criminals, even though violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low when he took office in January. “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday morning, shortly after being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/10/trump-homeless-g…
# Must read International, .Why have we let side-hustle private landlords seize control of our housing – and our politics?
Peter Apps The Guardian (No paywall)In the 1970s, private landlordism in the UK was a fringe part of the market – and a dying one. With council housing plentiful and house prices within the range of those with decent, working-class jobs, we did not need private landlords. In the mid-1970s, the Conservative Policy Council had written that their decline was “quite irreversible” and that within a generation they would be “as extinct as the dinosaur”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/12/private-la…
# International, .Illegal house-sharing exposed by BBC undercover filming
Tarah Welsh and Zack Adesina BBC (No paywall)In the middle of the night, says Maria, groups of people can sometimes be seen moving into houses in her neighbourhood, far more than would seem to fit comfortably in the Victorian terraced homes. Each of these houses has 10 to 15 people living inside, she estimates. Maria, an architect, suspects they are being illegally rented. "They're everywhere," she says. Maria contacted Your Voice, Your BBC News after spending years complaining about these homes to her local authority in east London, Newham Council. We began investigating - and found a widespread black-market rental sector where people are forced to live in unsafe spaces.
# International, Rent.Airbnb guest says images were altered in false £12,000 damage claim
Shane Hickey The Guardian (No paywall)Airbnb has apologised to a woman after an apartment host falsely claimed she had caused thousands of pounds’ worth of damage and used images she says were digitally manipulated to back up his allegations. The London-based academic was refunded almost £4,300, and an internal review of how the case was dealt with has been launched at the short-term accommodation rental company.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/02/airbnb-guest-…
# International, .Spain’s housing crisis deepens: residents’ anger is rising
Valérie Gauriat Euro News (No paywall)Millions across Europe are being priced out of housing, with Spain at the heart of the crisis. Euronews’s international correspondent Valérie Gauriat reports from Barcelona, where skyrocketing rents and property speculation are pushing residents to the brink. Since 2010, housing prices in the European Union have surged by over 50% on average, while rents have climbed by 26%. Spain is among the hardest-hit nations, with rents increasing by up to 80% in the past decade.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/08/06/spains-housing-cri…
# Hot topic Australia, .What’s happening to the cost of rent in the United States?
Gabriel Melmed Economic Observatory (No paywall)Americans faced surging rental costs in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. Since then, the cities and regions that have built the most houses have managed to bring prices under control. But in places where housing supply remains low, rents have continued to spiral. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States has faced a once-in-a-generation crisis of housing affordability. In mid-2022, a typical American renter devoted a greater share of their income to rent than at any point this century. Putting a roof over your head had never been so expensive.
https://www.economicsobservatory.com/whats-happening-to-the-cost…
# Research alert International, .Australian Government to Build Public Housing for US Soldiers, Rather than Our Own
Paul Gregoire Sydney Criminal Lawyers (No paywall)From 2027, the US and the UK will be operating Submarine Rotational Force-West out of HMAS Stirling on Meandup-Garden Island, off the coast of Fremantle on Noongar land in Western Australia. This is to be a permanent nuclear-powered submarine (SNN) force, involving four US SSN and one from the UK, and the Albanese government plans to build public housing for their personnel. Introduced on 24 July 2025 and passing through the lower house on 30 July 2025, the Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025 seeks to expand the operations of state enterprise Defence Housing Australia (DHA), so that it can “provide housing for foreign exchange and visiting military personnel”, as well as philanthropic organisations that provide support to ADF personnel.
https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/australian-governm…
# Australia, Public and community housing.Housing choices — but for whom? On the rise of community housing organisations
David Kelly Overland (No paywall)Harvey Coyne is a sixty-six-year-old Noongar man. Before moving into his current home in 2021, he was homeless for several years, sleeping rough while managing serious chronic illnesses. Harvey is awaiting major heart surgery, and his medical condition demands a stable, secure and quiet home environment. But instead, he has spent the last two years under relentless scrutiny by his landlord, and has been subjected to multiple attempts at eviction.
https://overland.org.au/2025/08/housing-choices-but-for-whom-on-…
# Must read Australia, Aboriginal renters, Eviction.