A new activist group says it is stepping up its campaign in the New Year with aims to “advocate for legislative and political policy changes that favour tenants and residents, not landlords.”
In a contribution to the Big Issue magazine the organisation’s secretary, Suzanne Muna, describes the recently-approved Renters Rights Act and Section 21 eviction ban as “a very small step.”
The group – called the Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC) – has been created out of the housing workers branch of Unite the Union – and says it “links tenants, renters, shared owners, and leaseholders living in homes owned by housing association, council, and private landlords.”
It is funded through voluntary donations and trade union subscriptions as it is “without the bottomless resources our landlords enjoy” according to its website, which goes on to say: “We maintain strong ties with trade unions, aiming to bring together tenants, residents and workers on issues of common cause. Together we campaign to improve people’s housing conditions and to reduce the commercialisation of public housing.”
In her Big Issue article Muna suggests that SHAC is a response to current policies.
She writes: “There are few signs from the Labour government that they are intent on reversing the catastrophic decisions that have led us to where we are now – record numbers of people who are homeless or in insecure, unsuitable, dilapidated, overcrowded, accommodation. Systematic financial exploitation through soaring rents and unregulated service charges. And landlords who are allowed to bully, discriminate, intimidate and otherwise act without accountability because tenant and resident protections have been weakened and enforcement systems eroded to the point of pointlessness.”
And she accuses the government of being ”increasingly and willingly beholden to big developers and private corporate landlords.”
Muna concludes: “The housing union project will seek its primary support and partnership not from landlords or government who have failed the working class so badly on housing, but from the trade unions who have both the funding and reach to take it onto a mass scale.”
You can see her article here: https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/housing-union-2026-shac/
This article is taken from Landlord Today