In my country such unions are actually mandatory and apartment buildings are collectively owned by everyone living in that building. Active union’s are amazing, my building just got a garden and a small bike shed is in the planning. The last place I lived got a whole renovation organize by the union.
That sounds more like a Homeowner’s Association to me
I have the same thing in my country and it’s called a co-op.
In the us, HOAs are 99.9% pure karen evil concentrate
No idea what that is. The direct translation to what it is is apartment union. Every resident is a member and we all vote what goes down on the general use areas of the apartment building. People who own their apartment have more leverage with their vote but people who rent have a say as well, most people in my country own an apartment though.
I think that’s called “housing association”
What country is this?
Estonia
Is it everyone living there or everyone who owns the property there? Many countries have the 2nd type.
If it’s the first, who pays for all the stuff?
The general purpose areas of the apartment building are owned by everyone who owns an apartment in the building. Renters do have a say in the decision making though.
As for who pays: every apartment union I have been a part of we have a small apartment union charge on our utilities, usually like 10 euros at most. The amount has always been voted on. So everyone living there collectively pays.
What does unionizing your building accomplish?
Collective bargaining, same as any unionization
How does a strike work in this case? Stop paying rent?
That’s correct, but it’s not just “stop paying rent”, as that’s illegal. In general, a tenant union would either facilitate or assist with helping the tenants set up a rent escrow to be released when the problem is solved and the rent strike ends
Escrow or not, if the landlord doesn’t get his monies, you go living under the bridge. Problem solved.
Actually no, tenants have a right to a livable space. This includes but is not limited to running water, electricity, heating, and functional appliances. Say for example that there’s a bug problem in a building. There’s a legal process so tenants can place rent in escrow and get relocated at the cost of the landlord until the problem is solved. A tenant union assists with that process. Tenant unions often also negotiate the price of rent, to keep it affordable. To me, this sentiment is the same as “you’ll be fired for union organizing”. The chance is there, but fearmongering doesn’t help.
Well, that’s not how it works in the UK. Once you withhold any monies, you lose all your rights and protections.
Even in the most dystopian places of the US that’s not how it works.
What leverage do you have though? You can’t go on strike, you’re legally obliged to pay the rent you agreed to. You can’t withdraw your labour, because you don’t do any.
You could work with a court and do something like put it in escrow so the court can see you not paying rent isn’t just because you can’t. Instead it’s about withholding money from landlord to begin negotiations. Basically still acting in good faith but also withholding money to give you leverage. IANAL
Double-check this for your state. For instance, in Ohio if your landlord is not keeping up on their end of maintaining the property you can go to the court and set up an escrow account with them that will hold your rent payments until ALL of the work is completed to YOUR standards, not theirs or the court’s, and they are legally barred from taking any action against you for the duration and just about anything they do afterward is immediately suspect of being viewed as “retributive action” which is illegal under the state’s renter’s rights laws. Always read your rights for your state.
Not sure, but it’d be cool for an entire building to withhold rent for building repairs, or repairs for an individual.
You can typically do that without a union though.
probably easier with a union. You show the landlord you are well… a union… and in it together
I’m not sure if a union is the right term for that, but organising as a group and having a spokesperson is definitely a good idea.
Sounds like it might be more like a coop. Alternatively, unionizing for the purpose of sharing information on the landlords’ practices, tenants rights, pooling money for legal help, etc.
I would think that if all the tenants banded together, they could also negotiate on rent rises. I doubt they could prevent them, but they could certainly threaten to refuse to pay collectively if it was too high. Yes, that risks evicting the whole building, but that seems like a bad risk for the management company to take.
Forming a “union” and not paying rent sounds like a sure fire way to get a whole building evicted.
I said refuse to pay the rent increase. Why would they evict the building over that? Because they don’t want any rent at all?
That’s simply not how this works, if you don’t pay your rent, you get evicted. And yes, a landlord likely would evict an entire building full of troublemakers.
The idea is, if you don’t like the cost of something, you go somewhere else. Why would rent be any different?
And yes, a landlord likely would evict an entire building full of troublemakers.
Do you have an example of a landlord evicting every tenant of a large apartment building because they banded together to oppose a rent increase?
The idea is, if you don’t like the cost of something, you go somewhere else.
Have you not been paying attention? There is nowhere else. Rent is ridiculously high everywhere. You free marketers are not grounded in reality.
Do you have an example of a landlord evicting every tenant of a large apartment building because they banded together to oppose a rent increase?
Has anyone tried this before? this entire premise just isn’t realistic, the only leverage you have over a landlord, besides knowing the rules, is taking your business elsewhere, AKA a boycott.
coup not coop mayhaps?
Co-op, as in a cooperative housing ownership
Coop, as in a really tight space made of wirefence
With as small as some of those apartments are, you’re probably not too far off
omg LOL ty.
Less ozone
Would this be legal in the U.S.?
Yes it is! Tenant unions are actually steadily gaining steam in the US. When I’m done with my union campaign, I’m going to start organizing my apartment
Excellent! I’m a homeowner, but I wish all of the renters in this country a way to get relief and this sounds like a good start!
Interesting. You’re giving me ideas! Ideas that I don’t know if I have the energy and resources to act on, but something to think about and maybe talk to other neighbors about. We have no rent increase protections or really many tenent rights at all here in Oklahoma and the prices are getting ridiculous…and these are supposed to be low income apartments. Bah.
Can’t se why it wouldn’t be other than blatant corruption.
That would be why, yes.
It is legal though. They legally cannot stop unionization.
Even the US president made a big speech about being pro-union last week and that it’s illegal to stop organizing them.
Y’all don’t have a national renters’ association that negotiates the rents?
Bro we still have slavery, they just moved it to prisons. Of course we don’t have anyone to negotiate rents on our behalf.
What countries do?
The Scandinavian ones do at least.
A lof of European countries do. If you rent long term, your lease is automatically renewed every 12 months and the rent increase is indexed in some consumer/ construction rate set up by the government. So no drastic increase. On the other end, if for some reason the tenant leaves and a new one arrives, the owner can set the new rent price as high as they wish in the limit of what’s authorised by the law as some metro areas have max rent prices and if you try to charge more then you’re fined.
Lol no, you just wake up one day and find out your rent is going up $500/month because a lot of people are interested
Idk about a union… Maybe instead an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
I was thinking more of an autonomous collective.
I’m 37.
I’m not old.
I think we can all agree that strange tenants, lying in pools, distributing memes is no basis for a system of building management
Unless…
How does going on strike work when you pay the landlord? what, exactly, is the point of the whole exercise?
Jointly negotiate rent increase or deny payment until maintenance is kept up?
You just get evicted and maybe even prosecuted. The end.
Well the idea is the landlord can’t evict everyone in the building at once. They lose a ton of money and it’s very hard to go to court that much.
Of course it isn’t really like a real union. They can easily replace tenants; it’s not a skilled position. Co-ops are better, since you actually own the building.
That’s dependent on the landlord owning the building rather than a single dwelling - which is not the norm where I’m from.
Direct actions are possible outside of withholding rent payments. The tenant association/union can provide legal assistance etc and file formal complaints. There’s a lot of processes that can be done to force landlords, they’re just not something the average tenant might know about.
Depends on contract and leverage. In contract for example, maintenance can be as much responsibility of owner as payment is of renter. In leverage for example, if cashflow from properties are crucial to an owner and all the tenants are in the same union, evicting all will hard.
I don’t know where you live, but what I can see over here is that tenants are fighting each other for the opportunity not to live on the streets. There’s literally no cash flow issues, just boot everyone who disagrees out and you’ll have a line of people at your doors waiting to pay as much as you say. Heck, some properties get rented out even without any viewings these days.
The effective move is to have everyone pay into escrow. Most areas have renters rights laws that guarantee minimum standards, if you provide written notice that these aren’t being met you are typically allowed to pay into escrow and withhold the payments until issues are fixed.
I did this in college after we negotiated them adding a dishwasher and got it written into our lease, then a few months later were fed up when it hadn’t been installed yet. I also helped a friend do this when they found cockroaches, and in their case after three months of it not getting fixed they were granted leave to break their lease and were awarded the escrow money on top.
Not all places have the same laws and it definitely helped we went to our university legal council and they laid out the options and wrote up the notice. But almost all places have at least basic standards
Here in the UK once you withhold any payment you lose all your rights.
Rent strikes are a thing
“Come and hang”
… the landlords? Down
I don’t get it… Like can you say we can’t pay your rent? They own the property and can do whatever they want with it? Or is it more like making everyone act in unison so that landlords are forced to take fair rent, or no one rents their prop? I’m down for that
Or is it more like making everyone act in unison so that landlords are forced to take fair rent
This one I think
Tenants can unionize?
Why not.
They can organize, chat and plan amongst themselves. They can use legal and illegal methods to threaten and hurt landlords who won’t do as they want.
Is any kind of tenants union formally permitted by the government? I doubt it.
Will cops try to hurt and kill unruly tenants? Absolutely.
Who’s "the government’? My government absolutely allow this
Edit: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Mieterbund
The Deutscher Mieterbund e. V. (DMB) is a federal association of tenants’ associations that sees itself as the political representative of the interests of all tenants of residential property in Germany, independent of the state and political parties. It is the umbrella organization of 15 state associations. These in turn, as registered associations under the name “Deutscher Mieterbund,” form the umbrella organizations of local tenants’ associations at the state level.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Likely they mean the US government. I’m not sure if anything other than labor groups can form an honest to God Union here. But I’m just as interested as the rest of the world, so I appreciate this comment for the knowledge that you can unionize tenant groups in Germany. That’s pretty cool.
The left can’t meme. What a shitty boomer meme 🤣
Fucking commies
You ain’t done nothing if you ain’t been called a red,
If you’ve marched or agitated then you’re bound to hear it said
So you might as well ignore it, or love the word instead,
Cause you ain’t been doing nothing if you ain’t been called a red!
Love it !
