A young man lounges under a beach umbrella in shorts, the sunny Dubai skyline visible over his shoulder. You, too, he tells his followers, can live the millionaire lifestyle plastered all over his social media accounts; the secret is housing vulnerable people at the taxpayer’s expense. The TikToker Luigi Newton, who says he started out working in a call centre and now manages a string of mostly social housing properties remotely from overseas, is just one of a new breed of landlord influencers boasting about the supposedly rich pickings to be made from buying up and renovating cheap housing to rent to social housing providers, ensuring a steady, hassle-free stream of government-backed income dropping into their accounts.
In one video, Newton admits he’s had flak online because one of his main clients is the outsourcing giant Serco, which mostly houses refugees: to him that’s a good thing, he says earnestly, because he feels he’s “really helping” people who need housing in desperate circumstances. But, perhaps more to the point for some of his followers, he reckons it’s more lucrative than renting to working professionals, thanks to the way the leases work.
