Why is the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) putting out a special bulletin around housing?? — The housing ‘crisis’ created by the market, enabled by consecutive governments, is paid for by us!
From those who build and maintain our homes, provide housing and advice, repair, retrofit, through to the impact of rent, mortgage and service-charge increases: the same costs hit our members, eating into pay rises.
As this Unite branch motion puts it: privatised housing does not meet the needs of the community or workers. That motion came through a NSSN supporter in a Unite branch and up the committee tree.
There is something fundamentally wrong when England has more than one million empty homes while hundreds of thousands of people are homeless or living in temporary accommodation. Councils are paying billions simply to deal with the consequences of the housing shortage. Councils in England spent £2.84 billion on temporary accommodation in 2024/25. Of this, £1.43 billion was net expenditure from councils after subsidies and household contributions.
So we have a situation where homes can sit empty as assets, while councils spend billions accommodating people who cannot get a secure home. And its taking out even larger chunks from our income. “the median average home in England, at £300,000, cost 7.6 times the median annual average earnings of a full-time employee (£39,300); in Wales, the average home (£213,000) was 6.0 times the median annual average earnings (£35,800)” (2025)
The ONS Housing Affordability Metrics place the national median house price ratio at 7.6x to 8x earnings (and over 10x in London), and historical tracking by the Resolution Foundation Housing Dashboard shows how this structural squeeze has steadily consumed a much larger share of household net disposable budgets.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
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St James Bermondsey, Southwark estate tenants fight Evictions & Rent Control
The St James Estate in Bermondsey shows the real cost of this system and tenants fighting back, many workers and trade unionists.
After Folio London, the private rental arm of Notting Hill Genesis, sold the estate to corporate landlord BMR Group in November 2025, Fifty households were served Section 21 eviction notices before the Renters’ Rights Act came into force. Others were hit with rent increases of £250–£900 a month. More than 150 families are reported to be at risk of losing their homes.
The abolition of Section 21 is an important victory — but it came too late for those already served notices under the old system. And it doesn’t solve the wider problem.
Without rent controls, landlords can still seek very large rent increases within the limits of the new law. Proper rent controls would have prevented the kind of inflation-busting increases making homes unaffordable.
More councils could use selective licensing, enforcement powers and rogue-landlord registers to regulate landlords and tackle the conversion of family homes into poorly managed or unlicensed HMOs.
That is why the St James campaign is not just about individual evictions, but wider, for public ownership, rent controls, proper regulation and real consequences for landlords, developers and the golden web of private-sector interests operating in housing. (Campaign support from SHAC – Social Housing Action Campaign, Southwark Trades Council, SIS, Unite 524 branch and the Unite London & Eastern Community Youth workers and not for profit RISC)
ACTION: St James campaign meeting — Tuesday 8 Sept
Join St James tenants, Butterfields Won’t Budge, SHAC and Unite Housing workers to hear how workers and residents can organise together against evictions, rent rises and the loss of family homes.
Tuesday 8 September 6.30pm — online
Register for the Unite RISC St James campaign meeting
Motion passed by Unite RISC CYWNfP – Use or adapt for your union or political group
ACTION: Lobby of Southwark Council — Tuesday 15 Sept
Support of St James tenants & demand council action.
Tuesday 15th Sep – 10.30am onwards
Southwark Council Executive meeting details
You can also
- £ Donate to St James campaign: support the campaign
- Forward this to your branch, workplace, social media and WhatsApp
- Discuss how rents, mortgages and service charges are affecting members
- Ask: what could a housing element of our pay campaign look like?
- Sign our petition
From rent strikes to industrial action: collective pressure matters
Housing campaigns show that residents can organise collectively around the money they are being asked to pay. Tenants at St James have challenged rent increases, with some increases being reduced.
Rent and service-charge strikes have also been used by tenants and residents to challenge unjustified increases, poor services and landlords who refuse to negotiate.
Many housing groups from Greater Manchester Housing Union, London Renters union to Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC) have organised and supported rent and service-charge withholding across multiple housing associations.
There have also been concrete victories. In one Clarion campaign, a tenant withheld payment after her service charge increased dramatically; after nine months of collective campaigning and withholding, the landlord dropped the demand.
When people act collectively around their economic power, they can make landlords negotiate where individual complaints are exhausted/ing and ignored. Our members are tenants, leaseholders, homeowners and housing workers. We are affected by rents, mortgages and service charges; our members’ wages are swallowed up by housing costs; and many of us work directly with people experiencing homelessness, poor housing and housing insecurity.
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What would it mean if housing was more integrated as a trade union issue?
Unite already recognises housing as part of its wider political campaigning alongside pay, pensions and workplace rights. Unite’s Community, Youth and Not-for-Profit sector includes thousands of housing workers, including workers in housing associations and advice workers. The local government has council housing, planning workers and construction branches.
Most unions support
- Council and genuinely social housing, built and retained in public ownership
- Rent controls, so landlords cannot simply absorb wage increases through higher rents
- Controls on service charges, with transparent and accountable charging, effective enforcement and consequences for abuse
- Stronger regulation and licensing of private landlords
- Bringing empty homes back into sustainable use
- Stop public money to subsidise an increasingly expensive private housing market
- Workers and residents organising together around housing
If housing costs are eating into the value of our wages, could housing be part of how we integrate pay claims, workload and pay campaigns? What else?
SHAC Blueprint for a National, Democratic Housing Union for All Tenants & Residents
At the TUC this year, housing campaign group SHAC – Social Housing Action Campaign is launching a landmark Blueprint to establish a democratic, member-led National Housing Union for All Tenants and Residents. This initiative aims to build an organisation capable of uniting renters, leaseholders, and shared owners on a mass-scale, and will also work collaboratively with existing campaign groups. It will pursue individual cases, collective action, political lobbying, and press work to fundamentally shift power away from landlords and into the hands of tenants and residents.
SHAC will be at Stall 16 for the full week with free copies of the Blueprint, and will be hosting a fringe meeting which you are invited to join:-
- Date: Tuesday 15th September 2026
- Time: 12:45pm – 2pm
- Location: TUC Conference Centre, Brighton
Our panel of guest speakers includes:-
- Suz Muna (SHAC / Unite the Union) discussing the Blueprint and Unite’s new Housing Campaigns Unit.
- Emma Dent Coad (former MP for Kensington) discussing her book Grenfell Britain.
- Fran Heathcote (General Secretary, PCS) discussing the union’s housing survey.
- Adam Taylor (National Officer, Fire Brigades Union) addressing post-Grenfell safety.
- w.shaction.org
- T(X): @SHAC_Action
- Insta: @SHAC_Action
- Bluesky: @SHACAction
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ACTION: Protest for rent controls & affordable housing!
Wednesday 9 September, 12 noon–2pm
Westminster, London
The government has confirmed that it currently has no plans to introduce rent controls in the private rented sector. We have to organise.
- Join the 9 September protest: protest details
- Online action: write to your MP
As our income decreases, the wealthy get richer and point out communities to target rather than what they are getting away with. Housing is a workers’ issue. Housing costs are a pay and social security issue. Collective strategic action can change the balance of power.
Read the latest weekly NSSN bulletin no.781: Lobby the TUC Congress for the strategy to fight the cost of living squeeze & to scrap 50% strike ballot threshold!
- Come to the NSSN rally and lobby of the TUC Congress in Brighton from 1pm on Sunday 13th September, in the Holiday Inn Hotel – register here
