I’ve been considering building a tenant’s union but I’ve never heard of anything like that over here before. A lot of the advice I see on the internet is about laws, which doesn’t transfer seamlessly to here.
Since rent prices have gone up a stupid amount since the pandemic, with no sign of going down despite our economy looking much better, it seems like a good avenue for some practice.
Anybody have any experience with starting one from nothing like that?
Advice from practice in my own city based on a comrade’s efforts at organising tenants. Pick a campaign, rent hikes are a good start. Use municipal information (if possible) to assess how many and which landlords hold properties, in our campaign we used the rates (city taxes) information as declared by landlords. Once you have identified good sites to start with e.g. Buildings with a single landlord, go door knocking and talk to people about the rent hikes and seek their level of anger and willingness to act, ask them about actions they might like to take, suggest some actions - could be staggered rent payments to make an admin nightmare for the landlord, in our country this can incur an extra accounting cost for the landlord and spread over a block of flats can be pricey, or it could be rent strikes. Once you identify some leaders amongst the tenants, organise the actions with them, don’t needa use the big C word at this stage of a campaign. After the campaign keep contact with those people, assess what worked and what didn’t. Rinse and repeat.
I appreciate that was a bit of a ramble, happy to have a fuller conversation around any specific details that are unclear or lost in the jumble
I think I’m at a way too early stage to start a real campaign right now, but that was useful. I’m still trying to find other like-minded tenants in my region and documenting rent prices. People are usually not very open to talking about money matters with strangers.
There’s also some severe obfuscation over here with multiple agencies doing the front between both small-time and gigantic landlords. That means that a single corporation can have multiple apartments managed by completely different agencies, and there’s not a single obvious opponent to do collective bargain with.
Some questions, did y’all start with support from some party or was it self-organised?
And do y’all have any demographics with the most initial success? I’m focusing right now on university students and people from other cities, but I could also find people elsewhere so we have more hands on deck.
We started with an initial block of 8 flats in which one of our members was a resident. There is no party in our country yet, but in my city we have a strong and well developing collective that we are using to build mass organisations among the workers. So we had no party support as such, but it was a collective effort. We have similar issues here where people don’t have much interest in discussing money matters, but due to rampant inflation everyone is starting to complain about costs. If you live in an apartment complex that might make it easier to get a start on learning the resources to figure out the exact ownership details of buildings.
Might be a bit of digging for data for a few months first, but hey we’re materialists right?
Couldn’t resist
Good tips. I actually live in a small apartment complex, but I don’t even have access to sections so knocking on most doors would be a bit difficult. I’ve been thinking of just leaving cards in mailboxes and such with contact information in case they’re interested. Do you think that’d be a good way to go, or sounds too much like a “Nigerian Prince” scam? It just so happens that I’ve met some interested people today outside the block, but momentum is always nice.
Oooh that’s awesome you’ve already got some interest, ka pai e hoa (well done comrade). Flier drops actually do work pretty well if worded well. As long as you don’t word it like a Nigerian scam you should be sweet as lol. Not everyone will get in contact, but a few might