The Rise of Property Guardianship: A New Solution to Britain’s Housing Crisis

What Property Guardianship Really Means

Imagine living in a former police station, an empty hospital, or a deserted office building—not as a squatter, but as a legitimate occupant paying significantly less than market rent. This is the reality of property guardianship, a growing trend that’s offering an alternative to Britain’s eye-wateringly expensive rental market. The concept is straightforward: instead of traditional tenancy agreements, people sign licence agreements to live in otherwise vacant buildings, effectively acting as live-in security for property owners. In exchange for occupying and protecting these spaces, guardians pay substantially reduced fees compared to standard rent.

The arrangement differs fundamentally from conventional renting. Rather than signing long-term lease agreements and paying monthly rent, guardians typically sign 28-day rolling licence agreements and pay what’s called a “licence fee.” This relationship exists in a legal grey area—guardians aren’t tenants in the traditional sense, which means they have fewer protections but also significantly lower costs. Across the UK, there are an estimated 754,000 empty properties, with management firms suggesting that roughly half could potentially house people through guardianship schemes. It’s a practice that gained public attention about a decade ago, partly through the Channel 4 series “Crashing,” though initially it was horror stories about substandard conditions that made headlines. Since then, the industry has evolved, with some companies joining the Property Guardian Providers Association to maintain standards, though comprehensive regulation remains absent beyond basic housing and health and safety requirements.

The trade-offs are significant. Guardians can be evicted with just 28 days’ notice—half the minimum notice period for traditional renters facing a section 21 eviction. Property owners can conduct inspections at any time, and while guardians typically pay deposits, landlords aren’t required to protect these funds in dedicated schemes as they would be for standard tenancies. Guardians also don’t have the right to request repairs unless there’s a genuine safety concern. These arrangements have housed people in everything from morgues and hospitals to cathedrals, schools, and former office buildings—spaces that would otherwise sit empty and deteriorating.

Real Lives: The Guardian Experience

Cherise Woods, a 30-year-old artist and designer, turned to property guardianship in 2024 after being evicted from her previous home due to a rat infestation. Facing the daunting prospect of saving for a house deposit while paying extortionate rent, she found a guardianship opportunity in a listed building in Somerset. Her accommodation consists of a former office space, approximately 20 square metres, complete with remnants of its previous life—plastic casing for computer wires running down walls, an abandoned pinboard, and dark blue industrial carpet. When she moved in, the room was completely empty, and she’s gradually furnished it with a bed, clothes rail, fridge, and desk, creating a functional if sparadic living space.

The building houses at least 15 other guardians on her floor alone, and Cherise shares several bathrooms and kitchens with these fellow occupants. “It’s pretty basic, but at the same time nicer than how I lived at university,” she explains. The kitchens are clean and hygienic, though far from luxurious. The lack of home comforts is noticeable—shared bathrooms used by all genders, some makeshift with pop-up plastic showers that require waterproof flip-flops to avoid verrucas. When she wants to use a microwave, she must descend several flights of stairs to another floor. Despite these inconveniences, her total monthly cost of £614—including allocated parking and a cleaner for communal areas—represents remarkable value. With no council tax, no electricity bills, and only a Wi-Fi dongle to pay for separately, she’s saving hundreds compared to the average room rent of £679 in her area, with some comparable rooms commanding £800 to £900 monthly.

The savings have been transformative. Cherise has accumulated enough for a house deposit and is soon moving into her first home—something that would have taken considerably longer through traditional renting. However, guardian life comes with peculiarities she won’t miss. Instead of keys, occupants use an app to unlock doors via Bluetooth, which becomes “annoying if your phone dies and you’ve got no way of getting in unless you bang on some windows and hope for the best.” Rules prohibit air fryers in bedrooms, children, pets, guests staying more than two days, and open flames. While new guardians are vetted, Cherise has no control over who else lives in the building, leading to occasional friction—like the time she had to shout from her window at someone drinking loudly late at night, only to receive profanity in return. “You’re always going to get that one guardian that thinks they run the show,” she observes.

London’s Guardian Stories: Voluntary Work and Uncertain Futures

Sam Whelan Curtin’s journey into property guardianship began three years ago when he relocated from Dublin to London and confronted the capital’s notoriously expensive housing market. The 38-year-old social justice worker found a one-bedroom 1970s council flat in Poplar, east London, with a licence fee of £720 monthly—hundreds of pounds below the area’s average rent of £1,031. The flat was in decent condition when he arrived, but guardians must make spaces their own, often purchasing essential items like ovens—a significant upfront investment when you could receive notice to vacate within a week of moving in. This uncertainty represents a calculated risk that every guardian must accept.

Sam’s guardianship comes with an additional requirement: DotDotDot, his property management company, mandates at least 12 hours of volunteer work monthly. Sam fulfills this obligation through Friends of the Joiners Arms, an organization dedicated to protecting and creating LGBTQ+ spaces—work that aligns with his values and professional background. While he’s experienced typical wear-and-tear issues in the aging building, including a broken boiler, the company has been relatively responsive to repairs. The psychological weight of potential eviction took time to manage. “It weighed heavily on my mind,” Sam admits. “You’re kind of going, well I could get an email or a phone call tomorrow saying I’m out and you just have to be ready.” Learning to live with this perpetual uncertainty required mental adjustment, as did accepting that any improvements he makes could be lost at short notice. With redevelopment expected to begin within six months, Sam is preparing for his next move, ideally into another guardianship but realistic about potentially returning to the prohibitively expensive private rental market.

Adriana Faria, a 49-year-old freelance set designer, has been a guardian in east London for two and a half years, occupying an old council estate building scheduled for demolition in 2028. While lower costs attracted her initially, the primary draw was space—something nearly impossible to find in London’s rental market at an affordable price. “Everyone who lives in London knows it is a nightmare,” she explains. Finding suitable accommodation is particularly challenging for freelancers like Adriana, whose income fluctuates between stable and precarious. Her one-bedroom flat features a sizable kitchen, living room, small balcony, and windowless bathroom, costing £1,025 monthly total—£825 for the licence fee and £200 for bills. The flat arrived completely empty, requiring her to purchase everything while consciously limiting expenditure on items she’d eventually lose. The floor was in terrible condition, covered in patchy red carpet, so she removed it herself and painted the underlying surface grey. Beyond one plumber visit for water pressure issues, she’s had no significant problems. The restrictions—no pets, children, elderly dependents, smoking, open flames, or large gatherings—haven’t negatively impacted her lifestyle. “To be honest, I don’t have so many friends so it’s not a problem for me,” she says candidly. The experience has provided more than just affordable space; it’s created community connections and a genuine bond with her neighborhood. Like the others, Adriana sees no reason to return to conventional renting, planning to move to another guardianship or, ultimately, purchase her own property.

Could This Actually Help Solve the Housing Crisis?

As Britain’s housing crisis deepens—with rents, house prices, and mortgage rates all soaring—demand for property guardianship has surged from both people seeking homes and property owners wanting security solutions. Guardianship advocates point to its potential as an affordable option for those priced out of the rental market, citing data from homelessness charity Shelter showing at least 382,000 people in England without homes. Critics, however, argue that the system legitimizes a two-tiered approach to tenants’ rights, potentially creating a subclass of residents with fewer protections. While no official country-wide data exists, estimates suggest between 5,000 and 10,000 property guardians currently exist in the UK. The Office for National Statistics reports 754,264 vacant properties in England, including 34,635 owned by local authorities and 303,185 vacant for six months or longer.

Natasha Taylor, managing director of AdHoc, a property management and security firm, estimates that approximately half of these vacant properties could house guardians. “The vast amount of vacant properties seems like a waste to me,” she notes, though acknowledging that HMO licences, planning regulations, and local authority requirements sometimes prevent utilization. While Taylor agrees guardianship helps people access housing, she emphasizes that it’s fundamentally a security solution—occupants primarily protect landlords’ assets. In recent years, guardians have increasingly prevented anti-social behavior and deterred squatters. A growing squatters movement, highly visible on social media platforms, targets vacant buildings, sometimes occupying them within hours of security removal, as happened with one Lambeth property AdHoc manages. Squatters can prove costly for owners, sometimes dumping waste or causing damage, making guardian occupation a powerful deterrent.

Arthur Duke, founder and chairman at Live-in Guardians, reports steady, significant increases in enquiries from both private and public sector property owners. “More and more businesses are actively looking at how their property strategies align with their environmental, social and governance commitments,” he explains. Guardianship reduces waste, prevents high street decline, and provides affordable housing when it’s desperately needed. While it won’t single-handedly solve the housing crisis, Duke believes it could “absolutely” contribute to solutions. “In reality, almost any building can be suitable for guardianship if it’s managed properly,” he says, noting that it particularly helps key workers and young professionals by easing pressure at the lower end of the rental market. However, he’s clear that guardianship isn’t a substitute for long-term housebuilding or structural reform—rather, it bridges gaps, reducing waste, improving property security, and providing affordable shelter during a critical affordability crisis.

The Need for Better Regulation and Oversight

Professor Chris Bevan, a property law expert who has extensively researched the sector, largely agrees that vacant properties could house people through guardianship schemes, but with a crucial caveat: the urgent need for improved regulation and data collection to prevent substandard living conditions. He advocates for several specific reforms, starting with a more active role for the ombudsman in the sector and requiring local authorities to survey guardianship properties systematically. “Whatever form the accommodation takes, it has to meet decent home standards,” Professor Bevan insists, calling for proactive local authority inspections of all guardianship properties in their jurisdictions to verify compliance with these standards.

The risk, he warns, is developing a substandard housing regime that exists beneath private accommodation standards, effectively creating a separate tier for people who cannot afford anything else—a dystopian outcome that must be avoided through proper regulation. “We should regulate the system to realise its potential,” he argues. Without adequate oversight, guardianship could drift toward exploitation rather than opportunity. The current lack of comprehensive data makes it difficult to assess the sector’s true scope, quality variations between providers, or the long-term experiences of guardians. Better regulation wouldn’t eliminate guardianship’s inherent trade-offs—the reduced legal protections will always exist as the counterbalance to reduced costs—but it could establish minimum standards ensuring that affordability doesn’t come at the price of safety or basic dignity.

The sector’s evolution over the past decade shows that improvement is possible. Following early scandals about substandard conditions, some companies have genuinely worked to raise standards, with the Property Guardian Providers Association establishing industry benchmarks. However, voluntary standards and self-regulation have limits. As demand grows and more people turn to guardianship out of necessity rather than choice, the pressure for comprehensive regulatory frameworks will intensify. The question isn’t whether guardianship should exist—clearly, it serves both property owners and people seeking affordable housing—but rather how to ensure it operates within appropriate boundaries that protect vulnerable people while maintaining the flexibility that makes it financially viable for all parties. Without such frameworks, there’s a real risk that economic desperation could drive people into increasingly unsuitable living situations, with guardianship drifting from innovative housing solution to exploitative last resort for those with nowhere else to turn.