News
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ACORN gets out the Renters’ Vote
Renters’ Vote was an initiative led by ACORN—the union for the community. For the past six years, we’ve been organising renters across the UK. Homeless, temporary housed and private renters—during the 2019 General Election we were aiming to mobilise those most excluded by the voting system. ACORN hit the streets for our biggest ever get
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Letting Fee Ban won!
For years letting agents arbitrarily charged tenants extortionate fees for whatever they could think of: signing a tenancy, printing a contract, reference checks, you name it. We even heard of one that charged a ‘collection fee’ for the effort it cost them to collect all their other fees. Exploitative agents often charged tenants hundreds of
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Say ‘no’ to the St. Philips Power Station
In May 2019 members in Bristol took action to oppose a new gas-fuelled power station planned to be built just 90 metres from a nursery school serving working class families in the most deprived ward in the South West and an area of the city with above-average air pollution. Following calls from members, community groups
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Tower block safety win in Newcastle
After receiving a tip-off that a private accommodation block had the same cladding that led to the Grenfell fire disaster Newcastle members demanded that it be removed. After initially denying that it was the same flammable cladding the owners only came clean after ACORN raised awareness and support for the campaign by petitioning outside the
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‘No Fault’ Evictions to be scrapped
For years private tenants in England and Wales have been the most insecure in Europe due to Section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act that allows landlords to evict tenants for no reason and with just two months’ notice and facilitating revenge evictions in response to tenants asking for repairs. Since 2015, some 140,000 tenants
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Solidarity With Survivors in Bristol
In 2018 our Bristol branch was contacted by two survivors of domestic violence looking for help with the unsafe, chaotic and bullying environment in their ‘safe’ house and from which they were now being evicted. The council who had cut off funding to the safe house provider nevertheless offered no support to the women affected;
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Natwest Say Yes to DSS!
Fresh from our victory over TSB we started to look at what other banks were up to. In the Autumn of 2018 a news story broke, revealing NatWest had the same discriminatory mortgage terms as TSB, but this time they were actively forcing landlords to evict tenants claiming housing benefit. ACORN members voted to take
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TSB Say Yes to DSS!
We celebrated ACORN’s 4th birthday in style in May 2018 with protests and occupations of branches of TSB across the country. members complained that TSB’s mortgage terms were preventing buy-to-let landlords from renting to benefits claimants, needlessly discriminating against some of the most vulnerable in society and fanning the flames of the housing crisis. Apart
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Keep the Council Tax Reduction
In 2017 Bristol City Council announced plans to scrap the Council Tax Reduction benefit and so force the 25,000 poorest households in Bristol to pay council tax. Faced with a drastically reduced budget due to brutal Conservative cuts, Labour Mayor Marvin Rees proposed to make up the difference with a policy that would have seen
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Sex for Rent exposed on national news
One of the most exploitative but least visible aspects of Britain’s brutal housing crisis is the disgusting situation of landlords using their properties as a means to extract sex from desperate tenants who can’t afford the rent that landlords keep high. Shelter is a fundamental human need and right and the economic coercion makes this