FOLLOW THE MONEY — THEN FOLLOW THE CONSEQUENCES

How grassroots housing activism became part of a professional policy ecosystem — and why the small landlord may be its unintended casualty

There is something profoundly strange happening in Britain's housing debate.

Campaigners concerned about inequality, concentrated wealth and corporate power are demanding reforms intended to protect ordinary tenants.

Many of those demands are perfectly understandable.

Yet the cumulative effect of the housing system being created may be to make it progressively more difficult for small individual landlords to operate while making scale, professionalisation and access to capital increasingly important.

If that happens, the ultimate result could be extraordinary:

a campaign against concentrated economic power contributing to greater concentration of housing ownership.

That deserves examination.

Not conspiracy theories.

Not accusations.

Just three questions:

Who is campaigning?

Who supports the campaigning infrastructure?

And who ultimately benefits from the economic consequences?

FIRST, LET'S BE FAIR TO ACORN

ACORN describes itself as a community union of working-class people: tenants, workers and residents.

It says it began with local residents tackling poor housing and developed into a national organisation with thousands of members.

It also says its work should be collectively funded through membership dues in order to maximise its independence.

There is no good reason to assume that the ordinary ACORN member protesting outside a letting agency is anything other than sincere.

They may have experienced a bad landlord.

They may be struggling with rent.

They may have watched friends become unable to afford housing.

They may genuinely believe Britain's housing system is unfair.

On much of that, letting agents themselves might agree.

But ACORN is no longer simply a collection of neighbours complaining about housing.

It is a sophisticated campaigning organisation.

It employs professional staff.

It has communications functions.

It has finance and membership staff.

It trains organisers.

It conducts political education.

It uses coordinated direct action.

It participates in national campaigns.

And it works alongside a much wider network of housing campaigners, unions, think tanks and foundations.

That doesn't make ACORN illegitimate.

But it does mean we should understand the ecosystem within which modern housing activism operates.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

ACORN says membership subscriptions are important to its independence.

But membership dues are not the whole story.

There is documented external funding.

The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust's published accounts, for example, record funding attributable to ACORN.

ACORN has also received support from the Lipman-Miliband Trust for political-education workshops in working-class communities dealing with issues including housing, the cost of living and public services.

The stated purpose of those workshops includes giving participants the tools to examine social issues and advocate for transformative change through collective action.

Again, there is nothing secret about this.

These organisations publish what they do.

The important point is simply that what appears on the pavement as spontaneous grassroots activism also exists within a considerably larger and more professionally supported campaigning infrastructure.

THEN FOLLOW THE NETWORK

ACORN does not operate in isolation.

Housing campaigning organisations cooperate through coalitions, alliances and common campaigns.

These relationships bring together tenants' organisations, campaigning charities, think tanks, research organisations and policy specialists.

And once we move another level outward, we encounter the world of philanthropic foundations.

One interesting example is the New Economics Foundation.

NEF publishes its funders openly.

Its disclosed funders include the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, Oak Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund and Open Society Foundations.

Open Society Foundations is therefore present within the broader progressive economic-policy ecosystem.

But an important warning is necessary.

We have found no evidence that Open Society Foundations directly funds or controls ACORN UK.

It would therefore be wrong to claim:

“George Soros funds ACORN.”

The evidence does not establish that.

What the evidence demonstrates is something subtler:

ACORN operates within a wider network of campaigning organisations, alliances, think tanks and philanthropic institutions whose activities and relationships overlap.

That is normal in modern political campaigning.

And it occurs on all sides of politics.

But it matters when we are trying to understand how ideas move from activism into mainstream political debate.

FROM FOUNDATION TO FRONT DOOR

The modern campaigning ecosystem might be pictured roughly like this:

Philanthropic foundations

↓

Think tanks and research organisations

↓

Campaigning coalitions and alliances

↓

Professional campaign organisations

↓

Paid organisers

↓

Local branches and activists

↓

Direct action, media campaigns and lobbying

↓

Political pressure

↓

Policy

That doesn't require anybody at the top telephoning somebody at the bottom and giving them instructions.

Ideas don't normally travel like that.

They travel through research, conferences, funding priorities, campaigns, reports, training, political relationships and shared assumptions.

Eventually an idea that began inside a relatively small policy community can appear to be an obvious political solution.

This is why following ideas can be as important as following money.

NOW FOLLOW THE CONSEQUENCES

This is where things become much more interesting.

The English private rented sector is not predominantly populated by giant corporations.

Government's 2024 English Private Landlord Survey found that:

45% of landlords owned just one rental property.

Another 38% owned between two and four.

Only 17% owned five or more.

Separate government analysis subsequently classified 83% of the landlord sample within small-landlord groupings.

The typical image of the private landlord as a giant property corporation is therefore misleading.

There is certainly substantial wealth within property.

There are large landlords.

There are bad landlords.

But there are also enormous numbers of people owning one or two rental properties.

Some are retired.

Some are employed elsewhere.

Some inherited a property.

Some use property as part of their pension planning.

Some accidentally became landlords after moving home.

These people are capitalists in the literal sense that they own an asset.

But they are hardly BlackRock.

THE GREAT REGULATORY PARADOX

Now consider what happens as the regulatory environment becomes progressively more sophisticated.

Landlords increasingly require knowledge of:

possession law;

property standards;

deposit legislation;

energy regulation;

electrical and gas safety;

tenant fees;

discrimination law;

data protection;

redress;

property databases;

licensing;

local authority enforcement;

and potentially substantial financial penalties when things go wrong.

Good regulation can improve housing.

Nobody sensible argues that dangerous landlords should be allowed to operate simply because they are small.

But regulation also creates fixed costs and organisational complexity.

And fixed costs behave differently depending upon scale.

Imagine a compliance system costs £1,000 to establish.

For somebody with one property, that cost is £1,000 per property.

For somebody with 1,000 properties, it is £1 per property before allowing for additional marginal costs.

Now add:

legal advice;

specialist staff;

software;

training;

accounting;

compliance monitoring;

insurance;

access to finance;

and the ability to absorb an occasional disastrous tenancy.

The institutional landlord has something the individual landlord can never possess:

scale.

GOVERNMENT ITSELF RECOGNISES THE POSSIBILITY OF EXIT

This is particularly revealing.

The Government's own impact assessment for renters' reform acknowledged the possibility that additional costs might cause some landlords to leave the sector.

Government's position was that the additional average cost was relatively small and that similar previous reforms had not demonstrated significant reductions in supply.

That is an entirely legitimate argument.

But the assessment then made an interesting observation.

It suggested that landlords facing the greatest costs might leave and potentially be replaced by “more professional landlords.”

Pause there.

Because that sentence contains the entire paradox.

What does more professional eventually mean?

Larger portfolios?

Limited companies?

Specialist management?

Dedicated compliance staff?

Better access to finance?

Greater economies of scale?

Potentially institutional ownership?

Professionalisation may produce better housing.

But professionalisation can also produce consolidation.

The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

MEANWHILE, INSTITUTIONAL RENTING IS ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED

Britain has simultaneously spent years encouraging institutional investment into residential property.

Build to Rent is specifically designed around large-scale developments built for private renting.

Government has historically described institutional investment in rental housing positively and developed policy intended to encourage it.

Again, institutional landlords are not inherently bad.

Some provide excellent homes.

Purpose-built rental developments may increase supply.

Professional management can provide tenants with consistency and high standards.

That isn't the point.

The question is:

Why do we discuss the departure of thousands of small landlords entirely separately from the growth of institutional renting?

They are occurring within the same housing market.

THE RATCHET EFFECT

Imagine a ratchet.

Every turn introduces another requirement.

Individually, each requirement may be reasonable.

A database here.

A redress scheme there.

A licensing requirement.

An energy improvement.

A new enforcement regime.

A new documentation requirement.

A restriction on possession.

Another penalty.

Another reporting obligation.

Each reform can be defended individually.

But businesses do not experience regulation individually.

They experience it cumulatively.

Eventually the one-property landlord asks:

"Why am I doing this?"

The institutional landlord asks:

"How do we incorporate this into our compliance system?"

Those are profoundly different questions.

AND THAT IS THE PARADOX

Consider the different participants.

THE TENANT ACTIVIST

Wants secure, affordable, decent housing.

A perfectly legitimate objective.

THE HOUSING CAMPAIGNER

Wants stronger rights and greater restrictions upon landlord behaviour.

Understandable.

THE NGO OR FOUNDATION

Wants structural economic and social change.

Again, entirely legitimate.

GOVERNMENT

Wants better standards, professionalisation and effective regulation.

Reasonable.

THE INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR

Wants predictable long-term returns from residential property at scale.

Also entirely rational.

Nobody has to conspire with anybody else.

But now examine where their interests intersect.

The activist demands more regulation.

The NGO develops the intellectual case.

The campaign organisation creates political pressure.

Government legislates.

Compliance becomes more complicated.

Small providers progressively reconsider participation.

The professional and institutional sector is better equipped to absorb the new environment.

Ownership gradually consolidates.

And eventually the activist who began by protesting against landlords may find themselves renting from a corporation owning 20,000 homes.

WHO WON?

That is the question nobody seems particularly keen to ask.

Certainly the small landlord didn't.

The independent letting agency may not have.

But did the tenant?

Perhaps.

If their institutional landlord provides an excellent home, professional repairs and secure occupation, they may be perfectly happy.

We should acknowledge that possibility.

But something else has nevertheless changed.

Economic power has become more concentrated.

The tenant no longer deals with Mrs Jones and her two rental properties.

They deal with:

a corporate policy;

a portal;

an algorithm;

a centralised rent-setting system;

a call centre;

an asset-management strategy;

and ultimately investors they will probably never meet.

That may be better.

It may be worse.

But anyone campaigning against concentrated economic power ought at least to notice that it has happened.

IS ACORN “CONTROLLED OPPOSITION”?

That expression is tempting.

But we should be careful with it.

“Controlled opposition” normally implies that somebody is deliberately controlling an organisation while pretending that it is independent.

We have found no evidence establishing that ACORN is secretly controlled by government, institutional landlords, Open Society Foundations or corporate capital.

And we should say so.

There is a more interesting possibility.

Call it:

SYSTEM-COMPATIBLE OPPOSITION

Nobody needs to control the movement.

Its members can be completely sincere.

Its organisers can genuinely oppose inequality.

Its funders can genuinely desire social change.

Government can genuinely want better housing.

Institutional investors can simply pursue investment opportunities.

And yet their independent actions can converge upon an outcome none of the activists intended.

That is how complex systems work.

CAPITALISM EATS ITS CHILDREN

There is a wider economic issue here.

The capitalism that produced millions of small property owners is changing.

Small shops disappear and supermarkets expand.

Independent businesses disappear and platforms replace them.

Local banks disappear.

Small builders disappear.

High streets consolidate.

Technology businesses become global monopolies.

Capital accumulates.

And housing may be following exactly the same trajectory.

The irony is extraordinary.

Some of those campaigning most vigorously against capitalism may actually be attacking one of its most decentralised remaining manifestations:

millions of ordinary individuals owning small amounts of productive capital.

Remove them and capitalism doesn't necessarily disappear.

It becomes bigger capitalism.

THE LANDLORD AND TENANT MAY HAVE MISIDENTIFIED EACH OTHER

The tenant struggling to pay £1,200 rent and the letting-agent employee who couldn't pass the affordability test for that same property are not necessarily economic enemies.

Neither controls interest rates.

Neither controls the money supply.

Neither controls land values.

Neither controls planning policy.

Neither decides how many council houses Britain builds.

Neither determines national taxation.

Neither controls global capital markets.

Yet increasingly they are encouraged to fight one another.

Tenant versus landlord.

Tenant union versus letting agent.

Protester versus shop worker.

While they argue on the pavement, the structure above them becomes steadily more concentrated.

Perhaps we are looking in the wrong direction.

A QUESTION FOR ACORN MEMBERS

If you are an ACORN member reading this, we are not asking you to abandon your concern for tenants.

Quite the opposite.

Keep asking questions.

Challenge genuinely bad landlords.

Challenge genuinely bad agents.

Demand safe homes.

Demand effective repairs.

Demand fair treatment.

But apply exactly the same scepticism to the organisations, policies and economic ideas on your own side.

Ask where ideas originate.

Ask who funds research.

Ask which organisations work together.

Ask who has access to policymakers.

Ask what happens when policies interact.

And above all:

FOLLOW THE CONSEQUENCES.

Because good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.

If a policy intended to defeat landlordism drives thousands of small landlords from the market but leaves rental housing increasingly attractive to enormous institutional investors, ask yourself:

Was landlordism defeated?

Or was it merely consolidated?

THE QUESTION LETTINGCHANGE WOULD LIKE EVERYONE IN HOUSING TO ASK

The housing crisis is real.

Tenant insecurity is real.

Bad housing is real.

But so are regulatory costs, shrinking supply, unaffordable house prices, small-landlord exits and increasing institutional interest in residential property.

These things should not be considered in isolation.

We don't need another housing war.

We need to understand the system.

Because the greatest trick in modern economics may be persuading two relatively powerless groups that each other caused the problem.

So before attacking the tenant, landlord, agent or activist standing opposite you, look beyond them.

Follow the money.

Follow the ideas.

Follow the legislation.

And then, most importantly:

FOLLOW THE CONSEQUENCES.

Because if organisations opposed to concentrated wealth help create a housing market that only concentrated wealth can comfortably operate within, we should at least be willing to ask:

WHAT HAVE WE ACTUALLY ACHIEVED?

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