SHAC is a national campaigning organisation that was launched by Unite the Union’s Housing Workers Branch.
It links tenants, renters, shared owners, and leaseholders living in homes owned by housing association, council, and private landlords.
We maintain strong ties with trade unions, aiming to bring together tenants, residents and workers on issues of common cause.
Together we campaign to improve people’s housing conditions and to reduce the commercialisation of public housing.
Our demands include genuine tenant and resident democracy, improved repairs and maintenance services, reduced rents and service charges, better health and safety provisions for all, and an end to the exploitation of housing workers.
Annual General Meeting 2025
SHAC held its Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 10th December 2025 and agreed the following:
Annual Report 2025
Treasurer’s Report 2025
2025 Elected Committee
Our constitutional documents:
See our photo archive of protests and events.
Why We Campaign
Increasingly for larger corporate landlords including housing associations, tenants and residents are mere commodities, and staff are just another corporate resource, instead of living, breathing human beings whose lives can be devastated when their employer or landlord mistreats them.
Tenants and staff alike complain of bullying senior management, of highly vindictive and oppressive cultures, of performance judged against arbitrary targets instead of the actual quality of service provided, of record surpluses but extortionate rents and service charges on the one hand, and low pay and sub-inflation pay rises for the majority of workers on the other.
Our Origins
SHAC was launched by the Unite Housing Workers Branch initially as a network following the November 2016 Axe the Housing Act Summit.
The summit brought together campaigners across a vast range of housing tenures, including council, private and housing association landlords, cooperatives, boat dwellers, and homeless people.
It became clear that a way was needed to bring housing association tenants and residents together, and SHAC was born. Over the subsequent years, it has developed into an independent, democratically run organisation.
Archive
- SHAC Annual Report 2024
- SHAC Annual Report 2023
- SHAC Annual Report 2022
- SHAC Annual Report 2021
- SHAC Committee elected December 2024
- SHAC Committee elected December 2023
- SHAC Committee elected December 2022
- SHAC Committee elected December 2021
- SHAC Committee elected December 2020
See our tribute to Barry Rowan, one of the first housing activists to serve on SHAC’s Committee.