Prince William’s Duchy Tenants Face Eviction While He Campaigns to End Homelessness

Prince William has spent years positioning himself as the royal who wants to end homelessness. Unfortunately, some of the people living on his own estate are now facing the possibility of losing their homes, and they are understandably furious.

According to a damning new investigation by The Observer, longtime tenants of the Duchy of Cornwall’s historic Bradninch Estate in Devon have been given six months to purchase their properties or leave as part of William’s plans to restructure the Duchy’s property portfolio.

Some families have lived and farmed on the estate for generations. Now they face the prospect of taking on enormous debts to purchase their properties or losing homes and livelihoods they believed would remain secure. And the irony of Britain’s future king championing homelessness prevention while his own tenants face displacement has not escaped the people affected.

Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall Is Selling Land Families Have Farmed for Generations

In an investigation published on 25 October, The Observer’s political editor Rachel Sylvester examined the consequences of William’s decision to sell the historic Bradninch Estate, which has belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall since 1337.

The newspaper reports that nine tenant farmers and a similar number of residential tenants are affected. Some have received possession notices and face difficult decisions about whether they can afford to purchase their properties. One longtime royal supporter expressed their anger in particularly unmistakable terms.

As The Observer reports: “I’ve been a royalist all my life and I think Charles was fantastic. William can go to hell.”

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The investigation also reveals that some tenants believe the valuations placed on their properties are considerably higher than their actual market value. Farmers who commissioned independent assessments reportedly found Duchy valuations averaging approximately 30% above market rates. Meanwhile, tenants who invested substantial sums improving their farms worry that those improvements have increased the prices the Duchy now asks them to pay.

The Duchy disputes suggestions that it is abandoning tenants. It says it has offered tenants first refusal to purchase their properties, frequently with discounts reflecting their circumstances, and that it provides support throughout the process.

The estate also maintains that it must legally reinvest proceeds from property sales into the Duchy rather than allow Prince William to use them personally.

So Much for Prince William’s Mission to End Homelessness

Prince William builds his public identity around ending homelessness while families on a Duchy of Cornwall estate that helps fund him worry about where they will live. That contrast is deeply troubling and arguably hypocritical. William launched Homewards in 2023 and ambitiously claimed that the initiative could end homelessness.

The cause may be worthy, but it is hard to take entirely seriously when the same conversation conspicuously avoids preventing people from losing their homes in the first place, especially when the landlord is the prince himself.

As Prince of Wales, William receives the Duchy of Cornwall’s annual distributable surplus, which was £21.6 million for the year ending March 2026. Yet some of his tenants are being asked to find potentially millions of pounds to buy farms they have spent decades maintaining. The Duchy calls this restructuring reinvestment in communities, housing, farming and the environment, legitimate aims on paper.

But there is a glaring difference between launching ambitious charitable initiatives and showing compassion to people whose lives are directly upended by your business decisions. This is precisely where William’s carefully cultivated image as a compassionate, modern royal becomes uncomfortable, and starts to look like public relations instead of principle.

King Charles Apparently Understood Something William Has Forgotten

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of The Observer’s investigation is the contrast between how tenants describe their relationship with King Charles and their experiences under William. The contrast is not merely stylistic, it is damning.

Charles, who managed the Duchy for decades before becoming king in 2022, reportedly maintained personal relationships with Bradninch tenants. He visited the estate, remembered people’s names, wrote personal letters and took an interest in the families living there. William, by contrast, has reportedly never visited Bradninch to meet the tenants. That absence is not a minor lapse in manners, it is a revealing failure of stewardship.

For all the criticism Charles has faced throughout his life, this story suggests he understood something important about the responsibilities that accompany inherited privilege. Being a royal landlord is not simply about collecting revenue and deciding which assets should generate better returns. These are people’s homes. These are farms that families have worked for generations. And these are communities whose residents trusted an institution that has existed for centuries.

William inherited an extraordinary position of wealth and influence. That inheritance also comes with responsibilities towards the people whose livelihoods depend on the estate. A future king can announce all the charitable initiatives he likes, but public service rings hollow when it stops at the estate gate.

It is difficult to reconcile the image of a future king devoted to public service with reports of families facing such profound uncertainty while he remains personally distant from their concerns.

Why Should Families Bear the Cost of William’s Ambitions?

What makes this situation particularly troubling is that the Duchy’s restructuring has been presented as an opportunity to achieve broader social and environmental objectives. The estate intends to reinvest money from property sales into projects including affordable housing, rural enterprise and environmental initiatives. But at the centre of that strategy sits an uncomfortable and frankly indefensible question.

Why should longstanding tenants face the possibility of losing their homes to help finance projects intended to benefit other communities?

The Duchy cannot simply answer that it has offered tenants the opportunity to purchase their properties. When someone has rented a farm for decades, offering them first refusal on a property potentially worth millions does not necessarily give them a meaningful choice; it is a consolation prize few could ever afford.

We are in a cost of living crisis, so a discount does not magically make an unaffordable property affordable. And offering someone the chance to take on substantial debt is hardly the same as protecting their housing security; it is transferring risk onto the very people the estate should be protecting.

There is also something deeply unsettling, almost perverse, about reports that farmers who invested their own money improving their properties now face higher purchase prices partly because of those improvements. The Duchy says it is taking specialist advice on how tenants’ investments should be reflected in valuations. That is welcome, but it does not erase the anxiety families are experiencing today.

William does not need to abandon his environmental ambitions or his homelessness initiatives, but he must treat the people already living on his estate as more than assets in a financial restructuring exercise.

Because if the future king wants to convince the public that ending homelessness is more than a carefully managed royal campaign, he would do well to start by treating his own tenants fairly.