My Gawd! My Wages! Introducing our Rent Calculator

By Joe Bilsborough (@joebilsborough) and Isaac Rose (@_isaacrose)   We've built a Rent Calculator. You put in your gross annual income and your monthly rent and it tells you when your 'freedom from rent day' is — i.e. when you finally stop working for your landlord. You can use it here: http://rentcalculator.xyz     There’s an …

Covid-19: the New Chapter of a Continuous State of Crisis. Looking at Berlin.

By Daniele Tognozzi (@danieletognozzi)   “It’s not easy to buy when the news is terrible, prices are collapsing and it’s impossible to have an idea where the bottom lies. But doing so should be the investor's greatest aspiration.”   Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Management.   At the beginning of 2020, Prequin announced private equity firms …

Spring in Huelga: dispatch from the Rent Strike in Spain

By Benjamin Irvine (@econbecon)   In the absence of adequate income support or rent relief programmes from the government, Rent Strike Committees across Spain are bringing renters together to negotiate with landlords and enable people to stay in their homes at a price that gives them room to breathe.   Precipitated by the coronavirus lockdown …

Grenfell, Three Years On: a Preventable Disaster that Could Still Happen Again

By Stuart Hodkinson (@stuhodkinson) and Phil Murphy (@MancCommunities)   Three years ago, at around 12.50am on 14 June 2017, a small kitchen fire started in a flat on the fourth floor of Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey public housing block of flats on the Lancaster West estate in North Kensington, London. The fire began from an …

Remembering Grenfell

By GMHA (@gmhousingaction)   Today marks the third anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, one of the deadliest peacetime fires in British history that killed 72 people and destroyed the lives of countless more.    For those who were in or around Grenfell Tower on the night …

Planning decisions in Manchester must be subject to full scrutiny

By The Meteor Team (@mcrmeteor)   For the past few months The Meteor has been covering Manchester City Council’s suspension of its planning committee. We explain why we’re committed to continuing to cover this issue, which has seen controversial proposals previously rejected, approved under delegated powers.   In March, Manchester City Council suspended its planning …

The ‘Good Landlord’ is a Myth

...or, Why Landlordism is Inherently Exploititative   By Tom Lavin (@tomlavin13)   Introduction: Good Landlord/Bad Landlord   Nominally ‘progressive’ housing charities, NGOs, politicians and newspapers are all quick to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ landlords. 1 When they want to add a bit of drama, they enjoy describing the bad landlords as ‘rogue’. Whilst it …

Manchester’s New Ruins, Ten Years On

By Owen Hatherley (@owenhatherley)   Over the weekend, a few items down on the headlines, below the pandemic and the protests and curfews in the US, was a story about a private Manchester high-rise called Skyline Central. This is one of dozens of speculative 'luxury flats' built in the centres of Manchester and Salford during …

Five tricks to throw out a Section 21 eviction notice

By Tenants Union UK (@tenantsunionuk)   During the COVID-19 crisis the government suspended section 21 evictions. Now, under pressure from the landlord lobby, they are planning on lifting this suspension. This means hundreds of thousands of tenants will now be at risk of ‘no fault’ section 21 evictions.   We need the government to end …