A rent strike, sometimes known as a tenants strike or a renters strike, is a method of protest commonly employed against large landlords. In a rent strike, a group of tenants agree to collectively withhold paying some or all of their rent to their landlords en masse until demands are met. This can be a useful tactic of final resort for use against intransigent landlords, but can carry risks for the tenants, such as eviction, lowered credit scores, and legal consequences. Historically, rent strikes have often been used in response to various hardships faced by tenants, however, there have been situations where wider societal issues have led to such action.

Strategy and causes

Rent strikes are an example of collective direct action where tenants refuse to pay rent landlords as a leverage of bargining power. Rent strikes can occur due to any number of unadressed issues facing tenants, such as high or rising rent costs; poor, unsafe, or unhygenic living conditions; precarity and housing insecurity; and unfair or abusive landlords. They may also occur to achieve a change in policy or broader political goals, such as civil and political rights struggles, or an increase in social housing. Rent strikes are often undertaken by organised groups such as tenants unions. In these cases, tenant unions may establish a strike fund or other form of crowdfunding to help support strikers, particularly against legal threats. Rent strikes may also be undertaken on a informal basis, with some instances seeing tenant unions formed as a result of the action. Some trades unions have been known to support rent strikes.

History

Some of the earliest evidence of collectively witholding rent comes from the 15th centuary, where it was noted in arrears lists as quia tenentes negant solvere, (lit. 'because the tenants refuse to pay'). Documentation of rent strikes increased going into the late 19th and early 20th centuary. Increasing industrialisation and urbanisation saw increased disputes between landlords and tenants. In response to an increasing frequency of rent strikes, landlords in some areas retaliated by forming associations of landlords, such as in Berlin and Stockholm. The COVID-19 pandemic saw an increase in housing precarity due to issues such as job losses, decrease in income, and the threat of evicition. These factors resulted in a series of rent strikes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In historiography

Frequently cases of rent strikes have gone unreported or under reported by perennial news sources, with details often shared via word of mouth. Aditionally striking tenants have often not themselves made record of strikes. Where strikes have been recorded—typically larger scale disputes—focus is given to the strike action itself, with the conditions which caused them receiving less focus. Rent strikes—and more broadly tenants movements—have primarily been analyised in relation to the labour movement and less within its own right. However, there has been an growth of academic intrest in rent strikes and tenants movements since the Great Recession.

Notable rent strikes

Europe

Africa

North America

South America