A tenants union, also known as a renters' union or a tenants association, is a group of tenants that collectively organize to improve the conditions of their housing and mutually educate about their rights as renters. Groups may also lobby local officials to change housing policies or address homelessness.

Definitions

In 1966, Schwartz and Davis defined a tenant union as "an organization of tenants formed to bargain collectively with their landlord for an agreement defining the parties' mutual obligations. In 2024, Baltz defined ''tenant associations'' as groups of tenants, generally in the same building or development, who organize to collectively advocate against their landlord and ''tenant unions'' as membership-based organizations who collectively organize across properties or geographic regions. Tenant associations are often formed in buildings where tenants are agitated over evictions, rent increases, conditions, or treatment. They may operate independently in a single building or affiliate with wider tenant unions. Tenant unions draw membership from associations and help organize them or provide them support in self-organizing. Tenants join tenant unions and associations due to grievances with the landlord such as high rents and poor building maintenance to seek reduced costs and better quality housing. Tenant unions are modeled on

labor unions A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

, collectively joining tenants against landlords. Tenant unions have also joined coalitions with other tenant unions at the city, state, and country level to campaign for more protections. ''Tenant organizers'' refer to those who seek to help create tenant associations, unions, and campaigns or further their aims. They may be tenants in their own building, independent volunteers, or affiliates or employees of tenant unions and campaigns.

Activities and tactics

Tenant unions engage in

rent strike 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 the ...

s to make demands of landlords and legislators, create eviction defense networks to prevent landlords evicting renters, and reoccupy housing from which renters where evicted. Tenant unions may be subject to laws such as those regarding legal rent strikes and affirmative lawsuits. Tenant unions and associations are generally free to devise their own membership structures, goals, and processes due to the nonexistence of laws regulating their structure or obligations. Tenant unions and associations may register as nonprofits or remain unincorporated. When tenants have a legal right to occupy their apartment they can leverage their occupancy and the law. Conversely, tenants with more limited rights tend to advocate towards governmental actors or engage in squatting or eviction blockades.

Australia

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

tenants laws are handled at a state level. Rights of tenants can greatly vary between different states.. There is no laws in regards to tenants union or collectively bargained leases. Although the ACCC has allowed for commercial Tenants to collectively bargin. There are multiple tenants union in Australia, with them usually being state specific. State specific tenants unions exist in

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

and

Tasmania Tasmania (; palawa kani: ''Lutruwita'') is an island States and territories of Australia, state of Australia. It is located to the south of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland, and is separated from it by the Bass Strait. The sta ...

. The Renters and Housing Union is the only non-state based Tenants Union, with branches in New South Wales, Victoria and

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

Canada

Tenancy laws in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

vary widely by province. The international community union,

ACORN The acorn is the nut (fruit), nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'', ''Notholithocarpus'' and ''Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains a seedling surrounded by two cotyledons (seedling leaves), en ...

, has chapters across the country whose work include tenant organizing and advocacy.

British Columbia

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

had a tenants' movement made up of several organized buildings in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

, and then a province-wide tenants union, between 1968-1975 that sought to secure

collective bargaining Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and labour rights, rights for ...

rights for tenants. In 1973, the Law Reform Commission of B.C. declined to recommend that the provincial government extend collective bargaining rights to tenants. The

Vancouver Tenants Union The Vancouver Tenants Union (VTU) is a tenants union and non-governmental organisation advocating for tenants' rights and interests in British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Can ...

was founded in 2017 to fight for the rights of renters and the preservation of affordable housing.

Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island is an island Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. While it is the smallest province by land area and population, it is the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", ...

(PEI) was the site of the first documented Canadian rent strike in 1864, where the Tenant Union of Prince Edward Island "committed to withhold the further liquidation of rent and arrears of rents...and to resist the distraint, coercion, ejection, seizure, and sale for rent and arrears of rent" unless they were given the opportunity to buy the land for themselves at a fair price. The landlords were largely wealthy and powerful nobility in the UK who had been gifted the land by the Crown, and had never set foot on PEI. By the time the government sent in troops to enforce the law, the union membership was estimated to total more than 11,000 members. The union crumbled soon after, however in 1878 PEI passed legislation dispossessing absentee landlords.

France

Rent contracts are negotiated between landlord and tenant organizations. Tenants who cannot afford negotiated rents receive housing allowances. Tenants are represented in court by consumer associations.

Mediation Mediation is a structured, voluntary process for resolving disputes, facilitated by a neutral third party known as the mediator. It is a structured, interactive process where an independent third party, the mediator, assists disputing parties ...

is a first step in addressing substandard housing before the association brings legal action. Tenant associations debated with other stakeholders in the National Housing Council regarding data sharing on

energy Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

and housing benefits paid to the private sector.

United States

Tenant unions have existed in the United states for over a century. The

Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act The Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, also known as URLTA, is a sample law governing residential landlord and tenant interactions, created in 1972 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in the United States. ...

of 1972 was the earliest legal acknowledgment of them, stating that landlords may not retaliate against tenants for having "organized or become a member of a tenant’s union or similar organization".

Section 8 housing Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937 (), commonly known as Section 8, provides rental housing assistance to low-income households in the United States by paying private landlords on behalf of these tenants. Approximately 68% of this assistan ...

in the US require that tenant organizations represent all tenants, regularly meet, and operate democratically and independently of the landlord under federal law. In the United States, tenant unions in the

state of New York New York, also called New York State, is a state in the northeastern United States. Bordered by New England to the east, Canada to the north, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the south, its territory extends into both the Atlantic Ocean and ...

have pushed for the passage of

just-cause eviction Just cause eviction, also known as good cause eviction and for cause eviction, describes laws that aim to provide tenants protection from unreasonable evictions, rent hikes, and non-renewal of lease agreements. These laws allow tenants to challeng ...

laws following the end of COVID-19 eviction moratoriums. Just-cause could include non-payment, lease violations, nuisance cases, or if a landlord wants to move into the property. Tenants unions in the US have also helped halt evictions and push for tenant bills of rights and

right to counsel In criminal law, the right to counsel means a defendant has a legal right to have the assistance of counsel (i.e., lawyers) and, if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, requires that the government appoint one or pay the defendant's legal ex ...

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City, Missouri, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by List of cities in Missouri, population and area. The city lies within Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson, Clay County, Missouri, Clay, and Pl ...

;

Tempe, Arizona Tempe ( ; ''Oidbaḍ'' in O'odham language, O'odham) is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, with the Census Bureau reporting a 2020 population of 180,587. The city is named after the Vale of Tempe in Greece. Tempe is located in t ...

;

St. Petersburg, Florida St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258,308, making it the List of municipalities in Florida, fifth-most populous city in Florida and the most populous city in the sta ...

; and other cities.AZ Centra

United States of America federal law Civil Rights Act of 1968#Title VIII—Fair Housing, prohibits housing discrimination based on race, gender, religion and other protected identity categories, but it doesn't explicitly protect tenants' right to organize collectively.

Legal protection

In a 2018 survey of state law, two states and

D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

were found to have substantial protections for tenant unions and tenant union organizing (Category 1 states listed below); twenty-nine other states protected tenant union organizing (Category 2 states listed below); and nineteen states had no laws protecting tenant associations or tenant association organizing (Category 3 states below).

Federations of tenants' unions

The International Union of Tenants has some unions as members, such as Living Rent and the Tenants' Union of Catalonia, in addition to non-union tenant advocacy organisations. In North America, the Autonomous Tenant Union Network was founded in 2018 and has held online and in-person conventions in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The Tenant Union Federation has existed as a federation of five tenants unions across the United States since 2024.