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
‘16 years later, I’m not unhappy’: the rise of Britain’s multigenerational flatmates
Jessica Murray The Guardian (No paywall)When Nicola Whyte first moved into a four-bedroom house share in Balham 16 years ago, she never imagined she would still be living there at 45. But with rents soaring, and ongoing challenges in saving up for a house deposit, she has ended up as a housemate far longer than she anticipated. “I didn’t think I was going to be here 16 years later, but I’m not unhappy,” she said. “My friends sometimes think I’m a bit weird, they ask me how I can still do it. But I really enjoy it. The rent is really reasonable, it’s close to work and I think it gives you a deeper understanding of people.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/08/rise-britain-mul…
# International, Rent, Share houses.AI Data Centers are Sending Power Bills Soaring
Josh Saul, Leonado Nicoletti, Demetrios Pogkas, Dina Bass and Naureen Malik Bloomberg (No paywall)Data centres are proliferating in Virginia and a. Blind man in Baltimore is suddenly contending with sharply higher power bills. The Maryland city is well over an hours drive from the northern Virginia region known as Data Center Alley. But Kevin Stanley, a 57 year old who survives on disability payments, say his energy bills are about 80% higher than they were about three years ago. “They’re going up and up,” he said. “You wonder, ‘What is your breaking point?’”
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-electric…
# Hot topic International, Utilities water energy internet.Rent controls are coming to the UK - but they're not a guaranteed win for tenants
Tarah Welsh BBC (No paywall)When Emily Gant moved to Berlin in 2023, she was warned how difficult it would be to secure somewhere to live. "You'll find a job in a month," a friend told Emily, who works at a marketing agency. "But it might take one or two years to find an apartment." Emily, 35, who is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, thought her friend was joking, but quickly realised "how competitive and how scarce the apartments are". After three months of searching, she eventually found a room in a shared apartment in Schöneberg-Wilmersdorf in the city's south-west for €800 (£692) a month - relatively modest compared with, say, New York or London.
# International, .‘Plainly wrong’: London flat dwellers fight shock £200,000 heating bill
Zoe Wood The Guardian (No paywall)‘If I could move, I would – to a place without a heat network. But I can’t while this debt is hanging over me,” says Anja Georgiou. The mother lives with her family in a rented flat in the River Gardens development in Greenwich in south-east London where, three years ago, residents were shocked to be presented with a surprise £200,000 bill for heating and hot water. With views of the Thames, and historic Greenwich Park nearby, it is a “very nice” place to live, says Georgiou. The development has a gym and swimming pool and, like many new-builds in the capital, the residents are hooked up to a communal boiler – one of the most common forms of heat network.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/feb/07/london-flat-dwelle…
# International, Rent, Utilities water energy internet.Britain’s building standards are now so bad, even the super-rich are facing housing misery
Phineas Harper The Guardian (No paywall)Even multimillionaires can’t escape Britain’s cowboy builders, it seems. Last week, residents of One Hyde Park, the UK’s most expensive flats, won a £35m court case against the contractor that built their homes. The high court ordered the construction company Laing O’Rourke to fix defective pipework that was discovered to be causing problems in 2014, only three years after the luxury development was completed. At the other end of the economy, tens of thousands of families are facing damp and mould issues also caused by botched building works.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/11/uk-housing…
# Hot topic International, Rent.Gentrification is pricing artists out of New York, threatening its cultural edge
Eric Berger The Guardian (No paywall)Rowynn Dumont, a curator, painter, photographer and writer, lived in about 25 places around the world before settling in New York in 2017. “It’s where my community and the art world infrastructure already were,” said Dumont. Exhibits in Union Square, the Flatiron District, Long Island City and the Lower East Side featured her work. She also co-founded a popular monthly new wave dance party, Black Rainbow, on the Lower East Side that would go until 10am.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/artists-populati…
# International, .'Sorry no Singaporean': Family tries to rent Upper Bukit Timah condo unit, shocked by rejection
Khoo Yi-Hang Asia One (No paywall)Finding a location convenient to call home may not have been easy, but now it seems this Singaporean family has one more hurdle to cross - their nationality. One Singaporean, surnamed Zhou, was shocked when he was rejected by a property agent due to his nationality while attempting to rent a condo unit along Upper Bukit Timah Road, Shin Min Daily News reported on Monday (Feb 10). The 36-year-old who currently lives with his family of five in a Redhill HDB flat shared that the Southaven II unit on PropertyGuru had caught his wife's attention, and he tried to arrange a viewing for the property.
https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/no-singaporean-condo-bukit-tim…
# International, Discrimination, Rent, Starting a tenancy.Rent Price Growth Still Outpacing Inflation — What That Means For You
Anna Helhoski Nerd Wallet (No paywall)The latest consumer price index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Jan. 13 shows that in December the shelter index (3.2%), which includes rent, continued to outpace annual inflation (2.7%). Over the 12-month period ending in December, rent alone was up 2.9%, according to the BLS. That’s just below the overall 12-month increase for shelter. It’s worth noting that rent increases in the CPI look different from data reported by rental websites like Zillow because there’s a lag in how rent data is reflected in the CPI. That means it takes longer for rental shifts in the market to show up in the report.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/finance/learn/rental-market-trends
# Hot topic International, .