Rent Is an Engine of Poverty
Rent is one of the ways poverty is produced and sustained in the UK and elsewhere.
When Income Is Swallowed by Rent
When a household's income is swallowed by rent, everything else becomes unstable:
- Food
- Heating
- Transport
- Childcare
- Health
Rising rents don't just reflect the cost of living, they actively drive it.
Rent Transfers Wealth Upwards
Rent extracts income from people with the least security and channels it to those who already hold property and power.
This extraction is treated as normal, even necessary or desirable.
Not a Market Failure — How Markets Work
In Newcastle and across the North East, rising rents coexist with poor-quality housing, short tenancies, and eviction.
This is not a "failure of the market".
It is how the market works.
Poverty cannot be reduced without confronting rent as a political and economic force.
Fight for Housing Justice
Join members organizing to confront rent as a political and economic force. Together we support each other facing housing insecurity and fight for systemic change.
Become a MemberFrequently Asked Questions
How does rent produce poverty?
When a household's income is swallowed by rent, everything else becomes unstable: food, heating, transport, childcare, and health. Rising rents don't just reflect the cost of living, they actively drive it by extracting income from people with the least security.
What is rent extraction?
Rent transfers wealth upwards. It extracts income from people with the least security and channels it to those who already hold property and power. This extraction is treated as normal, even necessary or desirable, but it is one of the primary ways poverty is produced and sustained.
Is the housing crisis a market failure?
No. In Newcastle and across the North East, rising rents coexist with poor-quality housing, short tenancies, and eviction. This is not a "failure of the market". It is how the market works—by design, it extracts wealth from renters to property owners.
Can poverty be reduced without addressing rent?
No. Poverty cannot be reduced without confronting rent as a political and economic force. Rent is one of the primary mechanisms through which poverty is produced and sustained in the UK.
Food & Solidarity is a member-led organisation in Newcastle upon Tyne. Members help members with food and housing security by working together to hand out food parcels, fight companies and stop evictions. This week, we thought about how organisations like ours come together over a common cause to do great work to create positive change or block negative change.
They do this by; listening to its members and adapting their approach based on what people said they needed, for example the national “Don’t Pay Campaign” in 2022 October price cap: what is the Don't Pay UK movement and your rights | Cambridgeshire Live and the more local activity to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Here, North East residents took action to Kim McGuinness, the North East Mayor, to demand the scrap. Both movements won what they were fighting for.
They were successful through coming together on a goal that everyone agreed to and taking action in a way that everyone agreed to. They changed things when members spoke out about it, and each person did what they said they were going to do. However, another thing these movements have in common was that after the goal was reached, the organisation came to an end, or didn’t go on to have any more great successes.
We think this is because of two reasons: people stop showing up, burnt out. Then, because people stop showing up, the organisation doesn’t achieve its goals, so those who stayed feel burnt out fighting for a change that doesn’t come.
So how do we make Food and Solidarity different so that we can keep fighting for our members and our communities?
Keep food at our heart. Every week, even if nothing changes, all our members are able to say that they contributed to someone getting food: themselves, others, or both. There is consistent good produced.
We show up when we say we will, and we do what we say we will do, for ourselves and each other.
We are flexible, members can contribute different things at different times depending on what works for them.
We lift each other up, with kindness, empathy, and curiosity for different world experiences.
We follow the people, standing with them on not just one issue, but any issue right-here-right-now. By doing this, we remain current and ready to take action as it comes.
The Housing Crisis Is Destroying Our Communities
When rents rise, whole neighbourhoods change. The people who built communities, who know their neighbours, who use the local school, the local shop, the food bank get pushed out. The housing crisis doesn't just affect renters. It hollows out the places we all live in.
Sky-high rents are forcing people to cut back on essentials like food and heating. Families are being pushed out of their homes altogether, cut off from family, friends, and community. Homelessness has reached record levels. There are an ever-increasing number of homeless deaths. Disabled renters face discrimination and cannot secure accessible homes. Institutionally racist housing associations and council landlords neglect and mismanage estates damaging our health and letting children like Awaab Ishak die.
This is not bad luck or mismanagement. It is the result of decades of political choices. For too long, successive governments have prioritised the desire of private developers and corporate landlords to make a profit over our need for affordable, secure, accessible homes. This can't go on. It's time to fight back.
This April, Food & Solidarity is running a practical workshop on housing organising - how to act when someone near you is in trouble, and how neighbours can back each other up instead of dealing with landlords and councils alone.
The day before, we're also taking part in a booklet launch that came directly out of that work.
These events are about what happens when neighbours stop dealing with housing problems alone - and start acting together.
37% of private renters & around 40% of social renters are in poverty after housing costs and that many households are only pushed into poverty once rent is paid.
After housing costs matter because it shows what people have left to live on, not what they earn.
Freezing Local Housing Allowance while rents rise is deepening hardship. We see this every week in the lives of our members. But increasing this allowance in a housing system without rent regulation does not solve the problem.
Sometimes change doesn't start with a big plan. It starts with people talking about what they're seeing every day, and deciding they can't ignore it anymore. That's how this campaign began.
It Started at a Members' Meeting
At a regular Food and Solidarity members' meeting, child poverty came up again. Members talked about how the two-child benefit cap was affecting families, and how immigration rules like NRPF (No Recourse to Public Funds) meant some families couldn't get help at all.
Someone suggested: what if we actually organised around this?
Door Knocking in Newcastle: Join Our Spring 2026 Recruitment Drive. Worried about talking to strangers? Here's why door knocking builds community, and why you should join our April 2026 volunteer drive in Newcastle. No experience needed.