Episode 2: Brighton’s Housing Tree

For my final thesis at the University of Sussex, I produced a three-part audio docuseries exploring Brighton’s housing landscape. Its history, its present pressures, and its uncertain future.

If Brighton’s housing history is a story of limits, its present is a story of pressure. In the second chapter of Brighton’s Housing Tree, the crisis moves from archives to lived experience, unfolding in soaring rents, disappearing landlords, and a private rental market stretched far beyond what most residents can manage.

“As previously discussed, the right to buy policy of the 1980s enabled 1000s of council tenants to purchase their homes at discounted rates. while this gave many a sense of security, it also shrank the stock of affordable housing available for those in need.”

Today, the divide is stark: just 9% of homes in Brighton are owned by the council, 5.2% by housing associations, while nearly 28% sit in the private rental sector. Against an average salary of £34,000, the numbers simply don’t add up—average rents sit at £1,800 a month, with housing costs consuming 63 to 73 percent of local incomes.

Former resident Daniel Butcher knows the math personally. “I moved out of Brighton in 2021… and the moving was because of the cost,” he says. After nearly two decades in the city, rising rents pushed him and his family farther and farther from the centre, until even an ex-council house in Portslade strained their finances to breaking point. “Almost my entire paycheck was just the rent,” he recalls. “It was just unsustainable.”

Even those earning well above the city average find themselves priced out. Councillor Carrie Pickett puts it bluntly: “I’ve had conversations with younger people, younger councillors, even… and it’s actually impossible, and they’re fairly middle class, well off people, so if it’s affecting them… anyone who is more financially challenged… there’s no chance.”

For David Chaffee, Chief Executive of Brighton Housing Association Sussex, affordability is only one part of the problem. The lack of regulation, and the lack of staff to enforce it, has created a private rental market where tenants are often left to fend for themselves.

“Local government’s been cut back by 31% in the last 15 years,” he explains. “So whilst there is some legislation already in place… local authorities haven’t got the resources to properly enforce and investigate all these matters properly.” From broken heating systems to dangerous HMOs, the council simply cannot intervene as often as needed.

At the same time, short-term lets are reshaping the market. “One of the biggest issues in the city… is Airbnb,” Chaffee says. “Sometimes they can earn more money renting somewhere out on a weekend than… for a whole week through a tenant.”

Layered onto this is the influx of students. “10s of 1000s, of students” Butcher notes, whose presence fuels a form of “gentrification driven not by luxury developers, but by the economics of student demand.”

Developers have responded with new high-rises, but not everyone welcomes them. David Fisher, trustee of the Regency Society, observes: “We’re now building a lot of new high rise… not everybody is happy about that… high rise buildings are not very good.”

As if these structural pressures weren’t enough, uncertainty over the Renters’ Reform Bill is pushing landlords to flee the market. Senior sales negotiator at Brand Vaughan Dee Karagol explains: “If you’ve got a plan of selling in the next five years, you’re better off doing it now… I would go as far as saying over half of our property stock is landlord selling.”

The bill promises to abolish Section 21 no-fault evictions. But ironically, that promise is driving more of them. “You had a moratorium during covid on any evictions,” Chaffee says, creating pent-up cases. Now, combined with landlords preparing to exit, evictions have surged with 59 homes repossessed in Brighton and Hove in 2024 alone.

Pickett argues the reforms cannot succeed without tackling the deeper flaw of Right to Buy. “It’s all very well building new stuff… but if people can then apply to buy it from the council, then we’re just back to square one of having no stock at all.”

By the end of the episode, one conclusion is unavoidable: Brighton’s crisis is not a single problem but a convergence of pressures. From rent surges, shortages, deregulation, student demand, short-term lets, and legislative delay. Together, they form a market where affordability is slipping beyond reach, and where even solutions bring unintended consequences.

Next, Brighton’s Housing Tree turns to the future: to sustainability, retrofit, and the question of whether a city stretched to its limits can find new ways to build and rebuild.