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
The Renters’ Rights Act doesn’t go far enough
Carla Denyer Metro (No paywall)Damp, mould, rot; filthy brown wastewater coming up through the bath plughole so fast that you have to stay up through the night to bail it out with a bucket before it floods your whole flat. These are the conditions that tenants at Queen’s Court in Bristol have been living in for years, which I saw first hand when I visited the flats recently. This situation first came to my attention when I was a councillor. The people who lived there were desperate for the property management company who looked after the building to take action on the terrible quality of the flats – but despite mine and their best efforts, time after time, the company’s response was woefully inadequate.
https://metro.co.uk/2025/10/28/landlords-leaving-tenants-unlivab…
# International, .UK to launch pilot scheme that helps homeless people access banking
Kalyeena Makortoff The Guardian (No paywall)Homeless people will for the first time be able to open accounts with the UK’s five biggest banks, in a pilot scheme marking the launch of the government’s financial inclusion strategy. The Treasury said its new national plan was meant to ensure financial services “worked for everyone”, as it also revealed programmes that could help rebuild the credit scores of domestic abuse victims, support families with no savings and roll out financial education in primary schools across the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/05/uk-to-launch-pil…
# International, .Rogers Park tenants call a rent strike over alleged unsafe living conditions
Marissa Perlman CBS News (No paywall)More than 200 renters under a Rogers Park landlord are withholding payment and won't agree to major rent hikes amid what they say are unsafe living conditions. So they've called a rent strike. Many of the tenants have lived in one of the four multi-family buildings along Damen Avenue for decades, and have multiple generations living in one unit. After the buildings came under new ownership, some tenants were told their rent would almost double. Now they're hoping to avoid being priced out of their homes.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/rogers-park-rent-strike-dam…
# Hot topic International, .Mamdani Has a Point About Rent Control
Rogé Karma The Atlantic (No paywall)Few policies disgust academic economists quite like rent control. In the 1970s, the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck famously described it as the “most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.” In a 2012 poll of prominent economists, just 2 percent said that rent-control laws have had “a positive impact” on the “amount and quality of broadly affordable rental housing in cities that have used them.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/11/mamdani-hous…
# Hot topic International, Rent.A waiting list of thousands, and just five new homes for social rent: this city shows the depth of Britain’s housing crisis
John Harris The Guardian (No paywall)Here is the dream, if you can afford it: gleaming apartments, close to Liverpool’s waterfront, complete with penthouse swimming pools with views of the north Wales mountains, and sumptuous rooftop gardens. They are mostly bought by investors who then rent them to local professionals: three years ago, a report on early sales of flats in one development said that 40% of early buyers were from Australia, China or Singapore.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/19/britain-ho…
# Hot topic International, Public and community housing.Renters' Rights Act: Here's what it means for you
Tarah Welsh, Tara Mewawalla and Jemma Crew BBC (No paywall)Described as the biggest shake-up to renting in England for more than 30 years, a new law giving tenants more rights was formally approved at the end of October. The government still needs to confirm how - and when - each of the changes will come into force. The new rules will affect more than 11 million people. Properties will be rented on a "periodic" or rolling basis, rather than under a fixed 12 or 24-month contract. That means that tenants who wish to remain can do so, which the government says will provide greater security.
# International, Eviction.Could Zurich’s housing cooperatives be the solution to the rest of Europe’s housing crisis?
Peter Apps The Guardian (No paywall)Children zoom down a tunnel slide, as their parents watch on, sipping coffees and chatting amicably on the long benches in the middle of the courtyard. They are surrounded by modern-looking housing developments – architecturally smart, medium-rise, expensive-looking in their design. This appears to be just another 21st-century development in a major city, a development that a builder has made a tidy profit out of, and flats that will have inevitably been snapped up by landlords and rented out at the highest market rate. But look a little closer, and things are different.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/23/switzerlan…
# International, .The EU too faces a big housing crisis – difference is, it’s a lot more honest and open about the causes
Tim Williams The Fifth Estate (No paywall)Hands up those who knew that there was a housing crisis in the European Union? By which I mean, by the way, almost all the countries within it. I’ve only just discovered this myself, so I don’t blame readers of this esteemed journal. Yes, I have been trying to explain for a while that those who think only New South Wales has a housing crisis really need to get out more. First, to realise that there is a housing crisis in every state in Australia, but then to go further afield to note that something similar has been going on in Britain, Canada and New Zealand and indeed across the Anglosphere, including many if not most states in the US.
https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/the-eu-too-faces-…
# Hot topic International, Public and community housing, Rent.