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
‘Why not work the system’? How punks inspired by Thatcher built a Hull housing cooperative
Peter Hetherington The Guardian (No paywall)Forty years ago, a small group of students and university dropouts living rough had a novel idea. What if they pooled meagre savings and jobless benefits for a modest terrace house, rather than rent a run-down flat? They raised a deposit for a £3,200 mortgage on a neglected two-bedroom property in the Victorian terraces of west Hull, running down to the quayside of a once-thriving fishing port, from where boats used to trawl the north Atlantic.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/26/giroscope-housin…
# History International, .My rent's gone up by almost 20% - and my landlord wants to evict me
Georgina Hayes BBC (No paywall)Govanhill is one of the most deprived areas in Scotland – but Elle Glenny is still facing the rising cost of living in this part of Glasgow. The rent on the 31-year-old community worker's one-bedroom flat in the south of the city has jumped from £590 to £700 a month. The increase came just months after the landlord served Elle with an eviction notice, which is being challenged at a tribunal. "I'm now paying up to 50% of my income every single month just to live," says Elle, who moved into the flat in 2023.
# International, Eviction, Rent.Treasury ‘considering taxing landlords’ rent’ to raise £2bn
Kalyeena Makortoff The Guardian (No paywall)The Treasury is reportedly considering a tax on landlords that will target income from rents in the autumn budget. The proposals are centred on the expansion of national insurance to include rental income, which is currently exempt from the levy, as part of a broader push to plug a potential £40bn shortfall in the public finances. Labour insiders told the Times that property income was “a significant potential extra source of funds” and landlords were seen as a way of targeting “unearned revenue”.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/aug/28/uk-landlords-could…
# International, .English councils pay private landlords millions in incentives to house homeless families
Jessica Murray The Guardian (No paywall)Councils across England are increasingly spending millions of pounds a year in incentive payments to private landlords to persuade them to house homeless families, with campaigners describing it as a “senseless waste of public money”. Data gathered by the campaign group Generation Rent via freedom of information requests showed that 37 councils spent more than £31m on one-off cash payments to private landlords on 10,792 occasions in 2024-25.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/01/england-councils…
# International, .NSW’s 2.3 million renters were promised protection. Then the premier acted for landlords, twice
Max Maddison The Sydney Morning Herald (Soft Paywall)NSW Premier Chris Minns has intervened to make two policies designed to favour renters more friendly to landlords, overruling the responsible minister and blindsiding stakeholders. Sources speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail confidential discussions said Minns moved to make it easier for landlords to prevent pets in their rental properties in September last year, then, in May, loosened restrictions on landlords evicting tenants because of planned renovations.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-s-2-3-million-renters-we…
# Hot topic NSW, Rent.Up to three quarters of investors in parts of Sydney negatively geared
Aidan Devine realestate.com.au (No paywall)Landlords across Greater Sydney are shifting a significant share of the cost of their properties onto taxpayers, with new data revealing over half of city investors are using negative gearing to support their expenses. Experts said the high number of negative gearing claims indicated many investors had taken on excessive amounts of debt in the hope of getting value growth on their investments. And the result was an explosion in the total cost of the controversial tax incentives, with total net losses on rental properties exceeding $3 billion a year in Greater Sydney alone.
https://www.realestate.com.au/news/up-to-three-quarters-of-inves…
# TUNSW in the media NSW, .Nine Sydney suburbs identified as priority areas for social housing, as west does 'heavy lifting'
Miriah Davis ABC (No paywall)Nine Sydney suburbs have been identified as priority areas for "well-located" social housing builds. For the first time, researchers from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) have mapped neighbourhoods where social housing has been built and compared access to amenities such as healthcare, schools, public transport and jobs. They found suburbs with less access to amenities had a higher concentration of social housing, particularly in the Canterbury-Bankstown and Western Sydney regions.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-03/priority-areas-social-hou…
# NSW, Public and community housing.Aussie dad reveals devastating family impact of another eviction as renters 'live in fear'
Stewart Perrie Yahoo News (No paywall)An Australian renter has laid bare the devastating impact of his family being evicted from their home of two years. Matthew Lorenzon moved around "a lot" when he was growing up, so he wanted to make sure that didn't happen when he and his wife were raising their son. However, the family has been forced out of two homes in Sydney's inner west in the past four years. The digital marketing manager told Yahoo Finance there is a hidden toll that comes with being forced out of your home.
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/aussie-dad-reveals-devastating…
# NSW, Eviction.