LONDON, July 17 — The tenant union, a mechanism for collective action by renters that has existed in various forms for more than a century, remains a persistent if legally constrained force in housing markets globally. Modelled explicitly on trade unions, these organisations allow tenants to bargain collectively with landlords, though they lack the statutory collective-bargaining rights that labour law grants to workers in most countries. The technical reality is that tenant unions operate on a spectrum of scale and structure.
In 2024, the researcher Baltz drew a precise distinction: tenant associations organise residents within a single building, while tenant unions are membership-based bodies that organise across multiple properties or entire regions. Tenant councils, a further refinement, unite residents in different buildings who share the same landlord.
The detail that matters is that this is not a new phenomenon. The International Union of Tenants was founded in Switzerland in 1926, providing one of the earliest international coordinating structures. But the record goes back further.
In Buenos Aires in 1907, thousands of tenants protested a 47 percent rent increase by refusing to pay. The action spread to 2,000 buildings and lasted a year, involving close to one-tenth of the city’s population.
Prince Edward Island, Canada, saw the first documented Canadian rent strike in 1864. The Tenant League of Prince Edward Island committed to withhold rent and resist eviction unless tenants could buy land at a fair price. By the time the government sent troops, league membership was estimated at more than 11,000.
The league disbanded soon after, though Prince Edward Island passed legislation. Tenants typically join unions due to grievances such as high rents and poor maintenance. Activities range from negotiating with landlords and filing lawsuits to conducting rent strikes and lobbying legislators.
Schwartz and Davis defined a tenant union in 1966 as “an organisation of tenants formed to bargain collectively with their landlord for an agreement defining the parties’ mutual obligations.” As ever, the gap between the trade-union model and the legal reality for tenants is the structural weakness. Without statutory bargaining rights, tenant unions rely on disruption, political pressure, and the threat of litigation rather than the formal recognition that labour law provides.
Whether that changes in any jurisdiction remains the open question.
