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
England’s housing courts at breaking point as renters battle no-fault evictions
Jessica Murray The Guardian (No paywall)It is a Wednesday afternoon at Stratford housing court, and every seat in the waiting room is full. Over the next few hours, a conveyor belt of tenants and lawyers file into the courtroom to discuss their housing disputes – up to 29 cases are dealt with in a single day. In one case, a tenant is trying to buy more time after receiving a section 21 no-fault eviction earlier in the year, before they were banned. He has had no luck finding emergency housing with his local council.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/07/englands-housing…
# International, Eviction.EU to give cities more power to curb Airbnb and short-term rentals
Greta Ruffino Euro News (No paywall)"Short-term rental activity" grew 93 percent across four major letting platforms between 2018 and 2024, according to the EU. European cities will have greater powers to restrict short-term rentals such as Airbnb under EU plans unveiled on Wednesday aimed at tackling rising housing costs in popular tourist destinations. The European Commission set out conditions under which local authorities will be able to limit short-term lets as part of its affordable housing package, designed to address what Commission Vice-President Teresa Ribera described as a “terrible crisis”.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/09/09/eu-to-give-cities-…
# International, .‘An act of resistance’: holdout homes in the US – in pictures
Mee-Lai Stone The Guardian (No paywall)Ben Marcin’s stunning photographs show lone houses, derelict homes and makeshift camps that stand as epitaphs to past lives and offer insight into how Americans on the margins live.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/aug/26/bal…
# History International, .Review finds serious hazards in rental homes
Owen Sennitt BBC (No paywall)An investigation into a city's privately rented homes has concluded there are high rates of people living in accommodation with "serious hazards". Norwich City Council officials estimated there were 2,286 homes with significant safety risks, representing 11% of the city's 20,300 rental properties. Problems are particularly prevalent in houses of multiple occupation (HMOs), they say, with a fifth of these properties having one or more serious hazards. People living in poor housing have complained to the council more than 670 times since 2020, prompting officers to suggest bringing in tougher rules for landlords.
# International, .More and more undergrads are living at home. That’s a crying shame – here’s why
Rohan Sathyamoorthy The Guardian (No paywall)If the headlines are to be believed, no one should want to be a student in England any more. And yet this September and October, a record number of school leavers will begin their journey at university, unwilling to let rising costs, a regressive loan system and dimming graduate job prospects blot out the promise of the best years of their lives. The burden now placed on today’s students has grown so heavy, though, that it is reshaping people’s experience of higher education: new data from the university admissions service Ucas shows a marked rise in the number of students planning to live at home with their parents, rather than moving away to study.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/31/undergradu…
# International, Rent.Rents in the UK are at record highs. Will they keep going up?
Liam Geraghty The Big Issue (UK) (No paywall)Rents in the UK are now at the highest point on record, leaving renters on low incomes struggling to keep up or find an affordable place to live – but there are signs that the rental boom is starting to fizzle out in 2026. Average private rents in the UK increased by 3.7% to £1,393 a month in the 12 months up to July 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The rate at which rents are rising has been falling in recent months but the amount they increased in July is up from the 3.3% increase recorded in June – just two months after the Renters’ Rights Act came into force in England. However, with UK inflation currently at 2.9% and wage growth at 3.5%, rents have largely been outstripping both in recent times with renters feeling the pain of rising bills too.
https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/rents-in-the-uk-are-rising…
# International, Rent.European Union moves to tackle short-term rentals
Kam Heskin The Portugal News (No paywall)New rules being presented in Brussels on 9 September will set out common criteria for identifying areas under serious housing pressure and determining when short-term rentals are contributing to the problem. The proposal could be particularly relevant to Portugal, where the relationship between local accommodation, known as alojamento local (AL), tourism and housing has become a contentious issue in Lisbon and other high-demand areas. It does not mean an EU-wide ban on Airbnb-style rentals is coming. Nor will Brussels require Portugal or individual councils to impose new restrictions.
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2026-09-09/european-union-m…
# International, .We need public records on the delivery of social housing
Marco Scalvini The Guardian (No paywall)Your editorial on London’s social housing (16 August) makes a persuasive case for treating social housing as economic infrastructure. However, infrastructure is normally monitored and social housing is not, either when it is delivered or across the years in which it is meant to remain affordable. A home is counted as affordable on the day that planning permission is granted and is rarely examined again, through completion, tenure change and the service charges that can make it unaffordable within months of occupation, as your reporting on shared ownership has shown.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/aug/24/we-need-public-r…
# International, Public and community housing.