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Category: Organising renters

view of london - blocks of flats from river

Can left housing campaigners in London please stop saying there’s no housing supply problem?

Posted on 12 January, 202327 January, 2023 by preorg

For a long time left housing campaigners have repeated constantly that the problem of housing in London is not that there isn’t enough, it’s that it’s poorly distributed. Housing clearly is poorly distributed in London, with many new-builds, old-builds, and ex-council houses snapped up by landlords. And perhaps sometime around the early 2000s it was…

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What would it take for UK tenants unions to really win?

Posted on 17 November, 202217 November, 2022 by preorg

A recent visit to Berlin has given me much cause to reflect on the thorny topic of how to win better housing for everyone. I have been part of the London Renters Union for 5 years and while little in housing has improved in that time, we have always been able to comfort ourselves with…

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Loudhailers on telegraph pole

Amplifying your community organising

Posted on 18 October, 2022 by preorg

One of the things I’ve realised through my research is that it is a vain hope that everyone who cares about the issues you are organising around will get involved in intensive community organising. The meetings and one-to-ones and campaign building are all very time-consuming. Many people – the majority of people, if we are…

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Streetscene outside a cafe

What will it take to build a renters’ movement?

Posted on 28 June, 202230 June, 2022 by preorg

An organisation like London Renters Union sees itself as part of a renters’ movement, or sometimes a housing movement. Like all movements it is not clear where the boundaries of the movement are, nor should it be. However activists in LRU do sometimes talk about a ‘renter identity’ that LRU is trying to marshall into…

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Renters, landlords, the people who love them, and the win

Posted on 16 May, 202231 May, 2022 by preorg

Is it better to be right or to win? And under what circumstances we you do both? These are big questions for a movement of renters in the UK. From the point of view of renters, there is a strong desire to morally judge landlords for their extraction of so much wealth, often for very…

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placard about rent debt

Can LRU grow it’s more precarious and vulnerable renter membership?

Posted on 6 April, 20226 April, 2022 by preorg

I’ve been talking to a wide variety of union members lately for my academic research and one of the conversations that I’ve fallen into with more precariously housed members – even when I haven’t brought it up – is how the union can do more to help members like them to be involved. Of course…

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Can't pay won't pay poster from London Renters Union

Whatever happened to the pandemic rent strike? – a view from within LRU

Posted on 29 January, 202215 February, 2022 by preorg

[Please note this is a personal view] The early days of the pandemic and lockdown saw a flurry of activity in London Renters Union, along with nearly every other tenants union in the world. It was clear that people were about to lose jobs and income on a large scale and that many would have…

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The space for a right to housing

Posted on 11 January, 202211 January, 2022 by preorg

London Renters Union, seeing itself as a radical organisation drawing on radical traditions, refers to a ‘right to housing’ seldom, bordering on never – at least in its formal literatures and trainings. Yet as this news clip featuring the union demonstrates, the idea of a right to housing does come up in the union’s street…

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city street with spire

Leftists like us: on the left and recruitment

Posted on 16 November, 202116 November, 2021 by preorg

I have noticed that one key difference between people who are left wing activists and – for want of a better term – ‘normal people’, is that the former are motivated by the very idea of collective action. In the more orthodox left tradition this is collective action in the workplace, while in the post-60s…

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Should we have a right to evict our landlord?

Posted on 27 September, 202127 September, 2021 by preorg

It’s exciting to see tenants in Berlin campaigning to take formerly government owned properties back into public hands, but it does rely on specific elements of German law that we don’t have in the UK. So how could we equalise the relationship between renters and landlords in the UK – not in some hand-wavy level-playing…

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Recent Posts

  • Can left housing campaigners in London please stop saying there’s no housing supply problem?
  • ‘Our Bloc: How We Win’ by James Schneider – a review
  • What would it take for UK tenants unions to really win?
  • Amplifying your community organising
  • What will it take to build a renters’ movement?
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