This section goes beyond Glasgow housing struggles to showcase a selection of campaign case studies from different tenant groups around the world all of which have grown since the 2008 global financial crisis. This intensified housing inequality and caused an unprecedented growth in evictions in neoliberal countries such as Spain, Ireland, Portugal and the USA. Evictions in Britain reached record levels since recording first began.
This housing inequality was further compounded by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which affected people’s ability to pay rent. This global wave of tenant groups has led to increased levels of organisation and power. Around the world, tenant and community unions develop plans and demands around protective interventions, such as rent freezes, expropriation of corporate landlords, and social house building.
As the tenant movement grows, knowledge around strategy becomes more important, such as how to win for tenants in the immediate, such as direct actions, but also how to build political power to achieve broader policy change in the longer term. Andreas Holm has called this the difference between ‘protest and programme’.
In this section we collate campaigns across cities and countries to provide insights into the different tactics and strategies of organisation and mobilisation which are being developed by tenant groups. This knowledge is useful in helping to develop campaign tools for other tenant and community groups to enact locally.
Each case study comprises video and text providing context to each campaign, what it achieved as well as advice and insight from local organisers involved and links to material used and other related knowledge and resources on the archive. This section is ongoing and we will continue to gather and share case studies.