England's ‘once in a generation' housing law takes effect as US housing legislation sits in congressional purgatory

Housing costs are eating up more and more of Americans' monthly budgets.

Half of renters and a quarter of homeowners are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than a third of their income to pay their rent or mortgage. Roughly 27% of renters are spending more than half of their income on rent.

In March 2026, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill to boost housing supply in the United States. More supply, the thinking goes, will staunch the surge in homes prices and rents. In the nation's 50 biggest cities, for example, rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments have increased roughly 40%, not adjusted for inflation, since 2020 . This legislation, however, is currently stuck in the House, overshadowed by issues like the Iran war and Supreme Court decisions.

While housing reforms in the U.S. remain gridlocked, the U.K. has been dealing with its own housing problems: 70% of Britons say housing unaffordability has become a national crisis. Across England, rents have spiraled , homelessness has risen and deteriorating and dangerous housing conditions have threatened the health of tenants .

In response, the U.K. Parliament passed the Renters' Rights Act, a major housing law that officials described as a "once in a generation " set of reforms.

More power for tenants

The bill became law after receiving Royal Assent and took effect in England on May 1, 2026.

Its signature reform is to eliminate no-fault eviction, also known as Section 21 eviction . Under a Section 21 eviction, landlords were able to terminate a month-to-month or fixed-term tenancy without fault, even if tenants paid rent on time and complied with the lease. The only stipulation was they had to provide two months' notice.

This will sound somewhat familiar to American readers: The vast majority of jurisdictions in the U.S. allow a landlord to terminate a month-to-month tenancy for any reason, as long as the landlord provides adequate notice.

In North Carolina, for example, where I live, a tenant with a month-to-month lease is only legally entitled to a seven-day notice of eviction under state law .

In England, Section 21 evictions were responsible for a 50% increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness from 2021 to 2022. Going forward, a landlord can still remove a tenant for a valid reason, but tenants will no longer be vulnerable to eviction when they have done nothing wrong.

The legislation also limits rent increases. Under the new law , a landlord may only increase the rent to market price, must provide at least two months' notice before an increase can take effect, and can only increase the rent once per year. A tenant who suspects their landlord has imposed an "above market" rent increase can bring the landlord to court.

It's important that this change is occurring in tandem with the discontinuation of no-fault eviction. Without restrictions on rent increases, a landlord who lost the ability to use no-fault eviction could still empty a property by simply jacking up the rent to a rate that the tenant could not afford.

Finally, the law also takes steps to improve the conditions of England's private rental housing stock by applying certain existing public housing standards, like strict timelines to address mold and damp, to the private rental sector.

It gives local housing authorities the ability to levy fines against private landlords who fail to meet these new standards. The new law also creates a rental housing registry that British tenants can search to get information about a prospective landlord or property. This will give tenants crucial information about a property before moving in and entering into a lease with a landlord.

A legislative pie in the sky?

Even though housing advocates have long pushed for these types of reforms to U.S. landlord-tenant law, the current legislation under consideration by Congress doesn't directly address renters' rights. Instead, it seeks to streamline costs and regulations for builders to boost the housing supply, while giving access to more financing for buyers.

One reason renters' rights are often not addressed at the federal level is the U.S. system of federalism, which divides authority between the federal government and the states. By and large, landlord-tenant regulation falls within the realm of state or municipal government.

Some state and local governments have used this power to enact rental housing policy. For example, Oregon largely prohibits eviction without cause. Chicago keeps a Building Department registry that tenants can search to see if a prospective rental has a history of building code violations. And New York City's rent regulations have survived multiple court challenges over the years. As recently as 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated that states have broad discretion to regulate the landlord-tenant relationship , which includes implementing rent control and rent stabilization arrangements.

This jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction approach means that an American tenant's rights can vary dramatically based on where they happen to live.

When crisis expands the window of possibility

That said, the U.S. federal government has intervened to protect tenants during acute crises.

In 2009, during the mortgage foreclosure crisis, Congress passed legislation to prevent tenants from experiencing eviction if banks foreclosed on the homes they occupied.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used its public health powers to institute a nationwide eviction moratorium to slow the spread of infection. Though the Supreme Court struck down the order 11 months later, the fears that opponents to the moratorium raised didn't pan out: There was no widespread, coordinated nonpayment of rents, nor did the rental housing supply collapse .

These reforms helped widen the Overton window – the range of policies deemed politically possible.

If unaffordability in the U.S. continues to worsen, perhaps rental housing issues will receive more political oxygen, with more legislation proposed at the federal level.

Until then, cities and states will have to continue leading the way.

This article is republished from The Conversation , a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Allyson Gold , Wake Forest University

Read more:

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• What if universal rental assistance were implemented to deal with the housing crisis?
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Allyson Gold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Conversation

This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 9:04 AM.