Is your rent going up? The government spent 48 hours saying it might do something about that.

Written By Food & Solidarity

Your rent went up. The government spent 48 hours saying it might do something about that. On Monday the Chancellor said she was thinking about a freeze on rent increases. By Wednesday the Housing Minister was on the radio explaining why that would hurt tenants. Local elections are on 7th May. Labour is expected to lose seats across the country, being totally wiped out in so some councils. The story appeared four days before polling day. Then they dropped it.

Food and Solidarity is 380+ neighbours in Newcastle: Byker, Walker, Elswick, Cowgate, Heaton, Fenham, Gosforth. Members get two food parcels a month. No forms, no referrals, no questions asked. When a landlord ignores repairs or serves notice, we show up with you. Not a concern-faced political candidate with a rosette with a leaflet. Us, your neighbours.

"It's really helpful. Two parcels a month help extremely. We are happy and in unity." Stella, Walker, member since 2022


The same week the government announced Right to Buy reforms. Social housing tenants will now wait ten years before they can buy their home, instead of three. New social homes cannot be sold under the scheme for 35 years after they are built. Over 150,000 council homes have been sold since 2012. The 150,000 are not coming back.

In the 1980s, when the UK had rent controls, the average person spent 10% of their income on rent. That figure is 33% nationally now. It is 45% in Manchester. It is 57% in London. 37% of private renters and 40% of social renters are in poverty after housing costs. Many households have enough money before rent is paid. Rent is what pushes them under. Between 2021 and 2026, up to 70 billion pounds of government money will go directly to private landlords through housing benefit. Public money that should be building social housing goes to investment firms like BlackRock.

People who come to Food and Solidarity for food parcels are not struggling because they cannot manage money. They are struggling because rent has taken what there is to manage. Housing, food, and income are not separate problems.

Hanan Abdulla is a mother of five. She reported black mould, rotting fixtures, and damp so severe it short-circuited her shower to her council landlord again and again for eight years. Her children grew up in those conditions. The council ignored her until Food and Solidarity forced their hand. Hanan's family are not unusual. Newcastle City Council has nearly 2,000 unresolved damp cases. Residents of Breamish House lived with collapsing ceilings and spreading damp while the council processed their complaints and took photographs and did nothing.

One of our members speaking outside BlackRock's Mayfair headquarters at the national housing march in April. The housing crisis is not an accident. It is a business model that relies on government inaction.

When Breamish House residents door-knocked their own block, collected evidence together, and took a collective letter to a cabinet meeting, repairs happened within 24 hours.

A tenant afraid of eviction or rent increase does not report the mould.

In 2022, members at a meeting were interested in the DontPay campaign, withholding energy direct debits en masse. Members surveyed the membership first. Over 60% were on prepayment meters. DontPay was not available to them. The plan changed: PPM workshops in church halls across the West End, bailiff resistance training, a rapid-response network. An internal EDF presentation, obtained via FOI, cited non-payment and community resistance as an existential threat to the energy retail sector. The following February, all major energy firms were ordered to suspend force-fitting of prepayment meters.

The two-child benefit cap campaign started the same way. Members at a meeting talking about what the cap was doing to families they knew. Someone said: what if we actually organised around this? It went to the membership and was voted on. Members spoke to other members while packing parcels, on the phone, on doorsteps. The petition was not signatures. It was photographs: faces from across the city.

The campaign had a threshold: 60% of members photographed before it would go forward. If 60% had not signed, the campaign would have stopped. A campaign is only real if the people it claims to represent are actually in it. 60% signed.

Members took the petition to Kim McGuinness. She refused to meet before the budget. Members staged a fun run outside her office: all but one wearing identical McGuinness masks, one dressed as Keir Starmer chasing them. When the council tried to block a motion on the cap, members were in the room. The motion passed by one vote. The two-child benefit cap was abolished in the Autumn 2025 Budget.

Members are now organising on rent increases. If your rent has gone up, or you think it is about to, we want you in that room!

Membership is 3 pounds a month if you are unwaged. Pay more if you earn more: that way it stays open to everyone.

If you know someone in Newcastle who rents, send them this.

Further reading:

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