Matriarch Cynthia Leveridge has lived on Princes Street in Mansfield for 47 years and barely draws breath as she recites the litany of sins for which her new neighbours are allegedly responsible: ‘Drinking, swearing, shouting, druggin,’ she says.

‘It used to be lovely here. Everyone knew everyone. It used to be quiet. Children could play in the park. That’s all changed now,’ she adds.

Like many people here, Cynthia, 75, has watched in disbelief as her once-quiet suburban street has absorbed an influx of new arrivals.

That’s because over the past few years, numerous three-bedroom terrace properties on Princes Street – once dominated by local families – have been transformed into ‘houses in multiple occupation’ (HMOs) as landlords seek to cream enormous profits from squeezing ever-greater numbers of tenants into ever-smaller properties.

Local residents, such as Cynthia, now accuse the council of turning a blind eye to the practice. They say it erodes social cohesion and has doubled the number of cars, led to a spike in anti-social behaviour and left street bins overflowing.

Things came to a head on September 15 when the owners of number 13 Princes Street – already a licensed HMO for six tenants – applied for planning permission to squeeze ten people inside the modest property.

The three-storey home – which originally had three bedrooms – was renovated to have six bedrooms, two on each floor.  The latest plans aim to ‘retrofit’ four of the bedrooms to make space for couples as well as fitting five of the bedrooms with hob cookers.

Meanwhile, the garden will be subsumed by no fewer than nine wheelie bins.  Bizarrely, the owners described the property in planning proposals as ‘underutilised’ to justify the expansion from six to ten occupants. To the dismay of many, the plan has since been approved with conditions.

As one irate resident put it sagely, ‘that sounds like a hotel, not a home’.

So how did Princes Street become a byword for the HMO crisis taking over many parts of residential Britain?

Government guidelines state an HMO is any property shared by at least three people from more than one household.

In other words, people from different families living together and sharing facilities such as a bathroom or kitchen. The most obvious example is student digs.

However, with single renters and even couples increasingly unable to afford their own property, demand for shared housing has grown – indeed, by 2.3 per cent from 2024 to 2025.

Landlords have rushed to adapt their assets and cash in on the chance to charge a fee per room rather than for the whole house.

According to a Freedom of Information request there were 41,162 applications to convert homes into HMOs in 2018.

In 2024 that figure rose to 57,725. By 2025 there were an estimated 472,823 HMOs in the UK.

One of the reasons behind the surge in HMOs relates to the Government’s attempts to move asylum seekers from hotels into communities to reduce the asylum bill.

Read More: Welcome to HMO street: It was a happy place where everyone knew their neighbours. Now the community spirit is gone