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Tenants union

This article is about the kind of tenants organisation. For other uses, see Tenants' Union.
Members of the Renters and Housing Union protesting in front of a real estate agency in Melbourne.

A tenants union, also known as a renters' union or a tenants association, is a group of tenants that collectively organize to improve the conditions of their housing and mutually educate about their rights as renters.[1][2] Groups may also lobby local officials to change housing policies or address homelessness.

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Definitions and history

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Definitions

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In 1966, Schwartz and Davis defined a tenant union as "an organization of tenants formed to bargain collectively with their landlord for an agreement defining the parties' mutual obligations.[3][4][5]

In 2024, Baltz defined tenant associations as groups of tenants, generally in the same building or development, who organize to collectively advocate against their landlord and tenant unions as membership-based organizations who collectively organize across properties or geographic regions. Tenant associations are often formed in buildings where tenants are agitated over evictions, rent increases, conditions, or treatment. They may operate independently in a single building or affiliate with wider tenant unions. Tenant unions draw membership from associations and help organize them or provide them support in self-organizing.[6]

Tenants join tenant unions and associations due to grievances with the landlord such as high rents and poor building maintenance to seek reduced costs and better quality housing. Tenant unions are modeled on labor unions, collectively joining tenants against landlords.[4] Tenant unions have also joined coalitions with other tenant unions at the city, state, and country level to campaign for more protections.[6] Tenant organizers refer to those who seek to help create tenant associations, unions, and campaigns or further their aims. They may be tenants in their own building, independent volunteers, or affiliates or employees of tenant unions and campaigns.[6]

Historical development

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Modern tenant organizing emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries alongside urbanization and concerns about housing conditions.[7] The International Union of Tenants, founded in 1926 in Switzerland, represents one of the earliest attempts at coordinating tenant organizations internationally.[8]

The movement gained momentum in the post-World War II era as housing shortages and urban development created new tensions between tenants and landlords.[9] Countries' approaches to housing policy differ across political situations.[10]

Activities and tactics

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Tenant unions engage in rent strikes to make demands of landlords and legislators, create eviction defense networks to prevent landlords evicting renters, and reoccupy housing from which renters where evicted.[6]

Tenant unions may be subject to laws such as those regarding legal rent strikes and affirmative lawsuits. Tenant unions and associations are generally free to devise their own membership structures, goals, and processes due to the nonexistence of laws regulating their structure or obligations. Tenant unions and associations may register as nonprofits or remain unincorporated.[6]

When tenants have a legal right to occupy their apartment they can leverage their occupancy and the law. Conversely, tenants with more limited rights tend to advocate towards governmental actors or engage in squatting or eviction blockades.[6]

Regional perspectives

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Europe

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Germany

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In Germany, tenants are strongly protected, with complex legal rules on when a landlord is entitled to raise the rent.[11] Membership in tenant advocacy organizations includes legal advice.[12] Rents are determined in comparison to similar units in the neighborhood.[13]

United Kingdom

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The UK has seen growth in tenant unions,[14] including London Renters Union[15] and the Greater Manchester Tenants Union, which organize across both private and social housing sectors.[16] The UK is one of the only countries in Europe that allows landlords to evict tenants without reason using Section 21 notices.[17]

Spain

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Spain has experienced rapid growth in tenant organizing in recent years,[18] with unions emerging across the country[19] as housing cost burdens have risen.[20]

Under pressure from tenant unions, the Catalan parliament passed rent control legislation in 2020, though the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal struck it down.

France

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Rent contracts are negotiated between landlord and tenant organizations. Tenants who cannot afford negotiated rents receive housing allowances.[21] Tenants are represented in court by consumer associations.[22] Mediation is a first step in addressing substandard housing before the association brings legal action.[23] Tenant associations debated with other stakeholders in the National Housing Council regarding data sharing on energy and housing benefits paid to the private sector.[24]

Sweden

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The Swedish Tenants' Association has 528,000 members. The rent-setting system is a social democratic model of sector-based union negotiation.[25] The Rent Control Act of 1942 started Swedish rental corporatism. The legislation remained until 1978 with traces lasting long afterwards.[26]

North America

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Canada

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Tenancy laws in Canada vary widely by province.[27]

Prince Edward Island (PEI) was the site of the first documented Canadian rent strike in 1864, where the Tenant League of Prince Edward Island "committed to withhold the further liquidation of rent and arrears of rents...and to resist the distraint, coercion, ejection, seizure, and sale for rent and arrears of rent" unless they were given the opportunity to buy the land for themselves at a fair price.[28] The landlords were largely wealthy and powerful nobility in the UK who had been gifted the land by the Crown, and had never set foot on PEI.[28] By the time the government sent in troops to enforce the law, the league membership was estimated to total more than 11,000 members.[29] The league crumbled soon after, however in 1878 PEI passed legislation dispossessing absentee landlords.[30]

British Columbia had a tenants' movement made up of several organized buildings in Vancouver, and then a province-wide tenants union, between 1968-1975 that sought to secure collective bargaining rights for tenants.[31] In 1973, the Law Reform Commission of B.C. declined to recommend that the provincial government extend collective bargaining rights to tenants.[31][32]

From the 1960s-80s, tenants at the Habitations Jeanne-Mance public housing complex in Montreal had active tenants' committees that organized against evictions, for fairer treatment from management, and for increased tenants' rights city-wide.[33]

Today, the international community union, ACORN, has chapters across the country whose work includes tenant organizing and advocacy.[34] However, the tenant organizing landscape across Canada is mostly made up of many small independent organizations.

The Vancouver Tenants Union was founded in 2017 to fight for the rights of renters and the preservation of affordable housing.[35]

Toronto has seen multiple successful rent strikes in recent years, including one in 2017 led by Parkdale Organize, a group based in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood, of over 300 tenants across 12 buildings for three months.[36][37] A documentary about the rent strike was released online a few months later. The York South-Weston Tenants Union has also led two successful rent strikes in Toronto.[38][39]

The Montreal Autonomous Tenants Union was founded in 2021 to use direct action to pressure landlords to keep rents low, make repairs, and stop bad faith evictions.[40] In 2022, the union successfully negotiated building repairs and rent decreases via collective action for three buildings.[41] In 2023, the union was sued for $380,000 by the Cucurull family, owners of the Gestion Immopolis real estate company, following a protest action at the company's property management office where the family and the union both accused members from the other side of violence.[42]

United States

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Tenant unions have existed in the United states for over a century.[6] The Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act of 1972 was the earliest legal acknowledgment of them, stating that landlords may not retaliate against tenants for having "organized or become a member of a tenant’s union or similar organization".[6] Section 8 housing in the US require that tenant organizations represent all tenants, regularly meet, and operate democratically and independently of the landlord under federal law.[6]

In the United States, tenant unions in the state of New York have pushed for the passage of just-cause eviction laws following the end of COVID-19 eviction moratoriums. Just-cause could include non-payment, lease violations, nuisance cases, or if a landlord wants to move into the property.[43]

Tenants unions in the US have also helped halt evictions and push for tenant bills of rights and right to counsel in Kansas City, Missouri; Tempe, Arizona; St. Petersburg, Florida; and other cities.[44][45][46]

United States of America federal law prohibits housing discrimination based on race, gender, religion and other protected identity categories, but it doesn't explicitly protect tenants' right to organize collectively.[47]

Asia-Pacific

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Australia

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In Australia tenants laws are handled at a state level. Rights of tenants can greatly vary between different states.[48] There is no laws in regards to tenants union or collectively bargained leases. Although the ACCC has allowed for commercial Tenants to collectively bargin.[49]

There are multiple tenants union in Australia, with them usually being state specific. State specific tenants unions exist in New South Wales[50],Victoria[51],Queensland[52][53] and Tasmania.[54] The Renters and Housing Union is the only non-state based Tenants Union, with branches in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.

Latin America

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Tenant organizing in Latin America often intersects with broader urban social movements addressing informality,[55] displacement, and housing rights.[56] Countries with significant informal housing sectors have developed distinct approaches to tenant advocacy that address both formal rental markets and informal settlement rights.[57]

Federations of tenants' unions

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The International Union of Tenants has some unions as members, such as Living Rent and the Tenants' Union of Catalonia, in addition to non-union tenant advocacy organisations.[58]

In North America, the Autonomous Tenant Union Network was founded in 2018 and has held online and in-person conventions in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.[59]

The Tenant Union Federation has existed as a federation of five tenants unions across the United States since 2024.[60]

List

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This is a list of federations of or containing independent tenant unions:

List of tenant unions

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See also: List of tenant unions in the United States

This following is a list of active tenant unions:

List of active tenant associations:

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "What is a Tenants Union?" (PDF). Tenants Together. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
  2. ^ "Help for Tenants Facing Eviction". Home Guides | SF Gate. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  3. ^ Indritz, Tova (1971-01-01). "The Tenants' Rights Movement". New Mexico Law Review. 1 (1): 1. ISSN 0028-6214.
  4. ^ a b Hales, H. Edward; Livingston, Charles (2022-09-06). "Tenant Unions: Their Law and Operation in the State and Nation". Florida Law Review. 23 (1): 79. ISSN 1045-4241.
  5. ^ Davis, Gordon J.; Schwartz, Michael W. (1966–1967). "Tenant Unions: An Experiment in Private Law-Making". Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. 2: 237.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Baltz, Greg. "Tenant Union Law". Yale Law & Policy Review. 43 (1).
  7. ^ Bradley, Quintin (2014-05-09). The Tenants' Movement: Resident involvement, community action and the contentious politics of housing. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-96265-6.
  8. ^ Domaradzka, Anna; Hamel, Pierre (2024-01-18). Handbook on Urban Social Movements. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 978-1-83910-965-2.
  9. ^ Goldfield, David (2007). Encyclopedia of American Urban History. SAGE. ISBN 978-0-7619-2884-3.
  10. ^ Gilbert, Alan; Varley, Ann (2002-09-11). Landlord and Tenant: Housing the Poor in Urban Mexico. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-93601-4.
  11. ^ Gigerenzer, Gerd; Engel, Christoph (2006-08-11). Heuristics and the Law. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-07275-5.
  12. ^ "Landlord changes rental contract, internet applauds tenant's response". Newsweek. 2024-11-13. Retrieved 2025-08-12.
  13. ^ Karras, Jana (2024-06-03). Legal barriers to the energy modernisation of dwellings occupied by low-income tenants and opportunities to overcome these barriers: Case study of Germany. Springer Nature. ISBN 978-3-658-44193-7.
  14. ^ Mooney, Gerry; Scott, Gill (2012-04-25). Social Justice and Social Policy in Scotland. Policy Press. ISBN 978-1-4473-0832-4.
  15. ^ Eastwood, Lauren; Heron, Kai (2024-03-04). De Gruyter Handbook of Degrowth. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. ISBN 978-3-11-077835-9.
  16. ^ Virasami, Joshua (2024-07-20). A World Without Racism: Building Antiracist Futures. Pluto Books. ISBN 978-0-7453-4810-0.
  17. ^ Gotby, Alva (2025-01-21). Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-80429-621-9.
  18. ^ Gray, Neil (2018-09-16). Rent and its Discontents: A Century of Housing Struggle. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. ISBN 978-1-78660-576-4.
  19. ^ Zacarés, Javier Moreno (2024-04-23). Residential Capitalism: Rent Extraction and Capitalist Production in Modern Spain (1833–2023). Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-02280-1.
  20. ^ Arapoglou, Vassilis P.; Gounis, Kostas (2017-09-15). Contested Landscapes of Poverty and Homelessness In Southern Europe: Reflections from Athens. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-62452-5.
  21. ^ Gilderbloom, John (2012-06-20). Rethinking Rental Housing. Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1-4399-0671-2.
  22. ^ Ball, Jane (2012-06-25). Housing Disadvantaged People?: Insiders and Outsiders in French Social Housing. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-63241-9.
  23. ^ Creutzfeldt, Naomi; Gill, Chris; Cornelis, Marine; McPherson, Rachel (2021-07-01). Access to Justice for Vulnerable and Energy-Poor Consumers: Just Energy?. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5099-3944-2.
  24. ^ "Les associations d'usagers s'inquiètent du partage massif de données concernant les bénéficiaires d'aides au logement" (in French). 2021-03-22. Retrieved 2024-11-30.
  25. ^ Adriana (2023-09-21). "Class Compromises in an Uncompromising Political Economy: Rent-setting and The Swedish Tenants' Union". Urban Matters Journal. Retrieved 2025-06-20.
  26. ^ Håkansson, Peter Gladoić; Bohman, Helena (2019-11-29). Investigating Spatial Inequalities: Mobility, Housing and Employment in Scandinavia and South-East Europe. Emerald Group Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78973-941-1.
  27. ^ Government of Canada, Innovation (2025-01-27). "Landlord and tenant relations". ised-isde.canada.ca. Retrieved 2025-05-20.
  28. ^ a b Robertson, Ian Ross (1996). The Tenant League of Prince Edward Island: 1864 - 1867 ; leasehold tenure in the New World. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-8020-0769-8.
  29. ^ Robertson, Ian Ross (2010). "The Tenant League and the Law, 1864–7". In Greenwood, Frank Murray; Wright, Barry; Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History (eds.). Canadian state trials. Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History (Series). Toronto Buffalo: Published for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History by [the] University of Toronto Press. p. 123. ISBN 978-1-4426-4015-3.
  30. ^ Tranjan, Ricardo (2023). The tenant class. Toronto, Ontario: Between the Lines. p. 70. ISBN 978-1-77113-622-8.
  31. ^ a b Jon, Paul S (2022-07-08). "Tenant Organizing and the Campaign for Collective Bargaining Rights in British Columbia, 1968–75". BC Studies (206): 31–58 – via CANLII.
  32. ^ "B.C. tenants must have the right to collectively bargain". The Georgia Straight. 2021-12-08. Retrieved 2025-05-20.
  33. ^ Nettling, Pierson (2022-05-01). "Tenant Activism and the Demise of Urban Renewal: Tenants, Governance, and the Struggle for Recognition at Habitations Jeanne-Mance in Montreal". Journal of Urban History. 48 (3): 523–540. doi:10.1177/0096144220950672. ISSN 0096-1442.
  34. ^ "About ACORN Canada - ACORN Canada". 2013-01-18. Retrieved 2025-05-26.
  35. ^ "About". Vancouver Tenants Union. Retrieved 2025-05-20.
  36. ^ "Parkdale tenants declare victory, end strike saying they've 'won' deal with landlord". cbc.ca. Aug 12, 2017. Retrieved Aug 20, 2025.
  37. ^ Reporter, Emily Fearon Staff (2017-08-12). "Parkdale rent strike over repairs, above-guideline increases ends with tenants declaring victory". Toronto Star. Retrieved 2025-08-20.
  38. ^ "How a group of Toronto tenants turned to a risky last resort and got a 'huge victory' | Globalnews.ca". Global News. Retrieved 2025-08-20.
  39. ^ "Canada: How Tenants Fought Back". Progressive International. Retrieved 2025-08-20.
  40. ^ ASB (2025-02-27). "Fundraiser to benefit SLAM work defending tenants". Westmount Magazine. Retrieved 2025-08-21.
  41. ^ Hébert, Emma (Jul 29, 2022). "Montreal tenants' union hopes 'people power' will lead to improved living conditions". cbc.ca. Retrieved Aug 20, 2025.
  42. ^ Morin-Racine, Antoine (2023-10-10). "Bagarre, menaces et harcèlement judiciaire : un propriétaire en guerre contre les locataires". Pivot (in French). Retrieved 2025-08-21.
  43. ^ "New York's eviction moratorium expires Saturday, concerns remain among landlords, tenants". MSN. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  44. ^ "City News | KCMO.gov - City of Kansas City, MO". www.kcmo.gov. Retrieved 2023-07-03.
  45. ^ AZ Central [1].
  46. ^ "Amid outcry, St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Robert Blackmon halts evictions". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 2023-08-07.
  47. ^ "Having trouble with your landlord? Here's how to organize a tenant union in Kansas City". MSN. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  48. ^ Make Renting Fair WA (2023-10-01). "National comparison of tenancy laws in Australia" (PDF). Make Renting Fair WA. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  49. ^ Commission, Australian Competition and Consumer (2025-01-31). "ACCC does not object to collective bargaining by tenants of the Toowoomba City Aerodrome". www.accc.gov.au. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  50. ^ "About our organisation Tenants' Union". New South Wales Tenants Union. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  51. ^ "About us". Tenants Victoria. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  52. ^ Pasi (2009-06-25). "About TQ". Tenants Queensland. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  53. ^ "About - SEQUR". South East Queensland Union of Renters. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  54. ^ "about us". Tenants' Union of Tasmania. 2025. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  55. ^ Angotti, Tom (2017-08-17). Urban Latin America: Inequalities and Neoliberal Reforms. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. ISBN 978-1-4422-7449-5.
  56. ^ Lees, Loretta; Shin, Hyun Bang; López-Morales, Ernesto (2016-03-21). Planetary Gentrification. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-5095-0590-6.
  57. ^ González-Pérez, Jesús M.; Irazábal, Clara; Lois-González, Rubén C. (2022-07-19). The Routledge Handbook of Urban Studies in Latin America and the Caribbean: Cities, Urban Processes, and Policies. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-60590-7.
  58. ^ "Members". IUT. Retrieved 2025-05-05.
  59. ^ "Tenants Unions". Autonomous Tenants Union Network. Retrieved 2025-05-20.
  60. ^ Burns, Rebecca (10 August 2024). "Tenants' Unions Across the US Now Have a National Federation". jacobin.com. Retrieved 1 November 2024.
  61. ^ Office, International Labour (1926). Industrial and Labour Information. International Labour Office.

Further reading

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