Renters unions

Renters unions seek to providers a similar space to trade unions, organising based on someone’s position as a renter rather than their employment. With the aim of collectively politicising renters as a class position, they tend to perform activities within two broad categories: responsive activities (such as organising direct actions in response to evictions), and long-term activities (such as campaigning and lobbying work).

Within London, renters unions have tended to focus on private renters, or at least tended to be thought of as having a focus on private renters. Part of this is due to the comparative under organisation of private renters, with many social housing estates being represented and organised by active Tenant and Resident Associations. Increasingly this divide is becoming less prevalent. This shift can be traced to campaigning and organising being done on poor conditions, which either mobilises across tenure, or frequently focuses on specific estates and properties owned by specific providers.

London Renters Union (LRU) is a renters union covering London, the city with the highest rents in Europe. It operates on three principles: community (regular meetings, socials, trainings and other events), solidarity (direct support for members facing housing issue), and campaigning (taking action and building power to transform the housing system more broadly).

While the union is active in many areas of London, there are a limited number of formalised branches: in Newham & Leytonstone, Hackney, Haringey, and Lewisham. This is because nascent branches have to need to be satisfied their membership meets a level of representation of the local community before it can be designated as an official branch. This mechanism exists to limit the existence of branches dominated by white, middle class ‘activists.’

LRU grew out of a smaller, localised renters union in Hackney called Hackney DIGS.

Acorn has a slightly more expansive remit than LRU or other more strictly defined as renters unions, describing itself as a ‘community union.’ However, in reality, much of Acorn’s organising concerns renters issues, and the group is commonly thought of as a renters union.

Until recently, LRU and Acorn had a mutual understanding that while Acorn might set up branches in London, it would not do so in areas where LRU already had an active branch in place, and visa-versa. The idea behind this was to both limit confusion, and centralise rentier power within one, more effective branch, rather than splitting it between two. More recently, we have seen a break from this: most notably in Acorn establishing a Haringey branch while a LRU one was already in existence.