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 Brutalist Experiment That Changed Housing
The Design Concept (No paywall)In the late 1960s, Camden Council took an enormous risk. At the height of London’s housing crisis, they funded one of the most radical, controversial, and ambitious housing experiments in the city’s history: the Alexandra Road Estate. Designed by architect Neave Brown, this vast concrete structure stretched for 300 metres beside a live railway line. It wasn’t just housing, it was an idea: that architecture could create community, dignity, and beauty for everyone.
# History, Video International, .National report on the housing system from a multi-level perspective: Spain
ReHousIn (No paywall)An extract from Deliverable 4.2 “National reports on the housing system from a multi-level perspective”
Spain’s housing system faces a structural crisis marked by high commodification, minimal social housing, and widening affordability gaps. Rooted in a pro-ownership model, homeownership has declined since the 1990s while rentals expanded after the 2008 crisis, amid housing financialisation. Austerity, mass foreclosures, and asset privatisation enabled global investors to consolidate portfolios, accelerating rentier accumulation and inequality.
https://rehousin.eu/documents/national-report-housing-system-mul…
# Research alert International, Rent.EU finally takes ownership of housing crisis
Aitor Hernandez-Morales Politico (No paywall)BRUSSELS ― For decades, the EU’s view on housing policy has been simple: It’s not our problem. Housing isn’t explicitly listed as an institutional competence in any of the EU’s treaties, and though Brussels has issued legislation tackling topics like the energy performance of buildings or the quality of construction materials, it has left regulating the housing market to national, regional and local authorities — until now.
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-eu-finally-takes-ownership-o…
# International, .The crimewave sweeping Britain? Illegal houses in multiple occupation
Aditya Chakrabortty The Guardian (No paywall)Fan of true crime? Then this column is for you. Rather than some cold case told through yellowing newspapers and sepia photos, this one is still happening. And just wait for the plot twist! But first let me outline the key facts; your challenge is to decide who’s guilty. Our crime scene is a redbrick townhouse built in the last years of Victoria – tall, battered but undeniably handsome. It’s in Bowes Park, on London’s northern outskirts – the kind of neighbourhood that on a Friday afternoon offers nice cafes, a community-owned pub and some WFH dads wandering the streets scavenging for ciabatta sandwiches.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/24/crimewave-…
# International, Rent.There were 17,000 rental properties available. A NSW teacher could afford just 550 of them
Alexandra Smith The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Sydney’s rental crisis is now so stark that only 1 per cent of properties would be classed as affordable for essential workers, with no affordable rentals available on the northern beaches or Sutherland for teachers, aged care workers or hospitality staff. The findings of new research from Anglicare Sydney will heap more pressure on the Minns government to deliver substantially more housing for the state’s key workers, who are often on low wages and pushed out to fringe suburbs and forced to commute long distances to work.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/there-were-17-000-rental-pro…
# Hot topic NSW, Rent.‘It’s turned Sydney into one giant resort’: City of Sydney to debate Airbnb cap
Jessica McSweeney The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The City of Sydney will be asked to consider imposing a 60-day cap on short-term rentals in an effort to return possibly thousands of homes to the long-term rental market, but not everyone is convinced a cap will work. Greens councillor Matthew Thompson wants Sydney to follow Byron Shire Council’s lead, after it introduced a 60-day cap last year. Like Byron, the cap would apply only to non-hosted stays, meaning entire vacant properties listed as short-term rentals, rather than those who live in the property but rent out a room or granny flat.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/it-s-turned-sydney-into-one-…
# Hot topic NSW, .'Green bans' saved Sydney's historic buildings and taught economists a lesson
Gareth Hutchens ABC (No paywall)Have you heard how The Rocks precinct in Sydney was nearly demolished in the 1960s and 70s? It boggles the mind to think about it. That historic precinct is the pride of Sydneysiders today. It's one of the things that makes the city special. Walk its streets, and visit its old pubs built from local stone, and you'll travel back in time to Sydney's colonial beginnings. But watch this short video from 1967 to see what city planners of that era had in mind for the area. It was pure vandalism.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-19/green-bans-sydney-1970s-u…
# History NSW, .Rental changes end 'impossible choice' for DV survivors
Kat Wong Yahoo News (No paywall)Survivors of domestic violence will find it easier to escape unsafe homes as part of sweeping changes to rental protections. Abuse survivors who share a lease will no longer have to notify other tenants when they want to leave, under new laws passed in NSW Parliament on Tuesday night. That responsibility will instead fall to their landlord or agent, who will tell the others on the lease after the survivor has left.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/rental-changes-end-impossible-choice-2…
# NSW, Domestic violence, Rent.