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.
Our main email newsletter, Tenant News is sent once every two months. You can subscribe or update your subscription preferences for any of our email newsletters here.
See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
We love sharing the news and hope you find it informative! We're very happy to deliver it for free, but if you find it valuable, can you help cover the extra costs incurred by making a donation?
Archive
‘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, .Rents surging beyond wage growth creating record unaffordability
ABC (No paywall)A new report from Cotality has found rents have been surging well beyond wage growth. Leo Patterson Ross from the Tenants Union NSW says rental affordability is usually stable and the surge in rental growth means many people will simply lose their homes and communities to get something more affordable.
# Must read, TUNSW in the media, Video NSW, .Homelessness NSW report estimates 80,000 people homeless in NSW
Suzan Giuliani and Danielle Gusmaroli Adelaide Now (No paywall)The state government has been accused of letting NSW’s homelessness crisis spiral out of control, as new figures reveal the number of people sleeping rough has more than doubled in the past four years. The latest data by Impact Economics for Homelessness NSW, which surveyed 12 services across the state, estimates 80,000 people are homeless in NSW – up from 35,011 recorded in the 2021 Census. The scathing report also shows that NSW’s funding for homelessness services is the lowest in the country, at $37 per person, compared to $75 in Victoria and $91 in Tasmania. Shockingly, the data showed a further 700,000 people were also at risk of homelessness.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/nsw/homelessness-nsw-report-…
# NSW, .Warning shot fired at Aussie landlords and real estate agents after 'unlawful' request to renter
Brianne Tolj Yahoo News (No paywall)From dozens of eager tenants lining up around the block every weekend, to Aussies trading comfort and privacy for a roof over their head, the country’s rental crisis seems like it’s only getting worse. It was again placed in the spotlight this week when a $430-per-week listing in Sydney’s outer suburbs was slammed for its “ridiculous” requirements. The 60m² granny flat in Heathcote, on Sydney's southern outskirts, which is described as a “three-room garden studio”, was called out online by renters for the private landlord’s request that the new tenant “be quiet, private, and drug and alcohol-free”. The property is “ideal for a retiree, single mother or student”, the ad states.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/warning-shot-fired-at-aussie-landlords…
# NSW, Rent, Starting a tenancy.