By Lily Gordon Brown (@lilygbrown)

 

Covid-19 has frequently been depicted by as a virus that “does not discriminate”. Epidemiologically speaking, this is correct. So long as it can find someone — anyone — to latch onto and thus spread, it will continue to live aggressively amongst us for the months ahead. However, looking at the virus and its effects through a socio-political lens, we see a very different picture emerge. In March, it quickly became clear that the economically vulnerable would bear the brunt of a national lockdown. Whilst low-paid frontline workers have continued operate in terribly unsafe conditions, corporate shareholders have profited from the crisis. Perhaps best understood through Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ theory, the crisis has been an opportunity seized by the rich to get richer.

 

Housing has been a key site of anguish throughout the pandemic. Despite thousands of renters losing access to work, facing unemployment or receiving inadequate furlough, nobody in the political class would advance arguments for rent cancellations. While unexpected from Conservative party, it was emphatically disappointing when Thangam Debboanire, Labour’s newly appointed Housing Minister, announced that such a proposition would be “un-Labour”, even going so far as to suggest that such a policy would infringe landlords’ right to property — their ‘right’ to collect your rent.

 

As ever, there was a disconnect between the elite and the rest: as renters faced the reality of looming rent arrears, landlords across the country were offered a mortgage holiday. While landlords have been subsidised and continued to collect rents, rent debt has increased, with an estimated half a million renters now in arrears. The strong case for the abolition of landlordism far predated the pandemic, yet the past 10 months has only served to strengthen it.

 

The only, albeit mild, saving grace for tenants was the introduction of the eviction ban. During the first wave of the pandemic, the government put a halt on court proceedings regarding possession, thus banning house evictions entirely.

 

Despite landlord lobbying otherwise, tenant unions across the UK played a significant role in pressuring the government to delay the lifting of the eviction ban. The likes of ACORN UK and London Renters Union have relentlessly campaigned not just to extend the ban but bring a permanent end to Section 21 — which has long been a key goal in the fight for renters’ rights. It is almost certain that it is thanks to these efforts that the ban has remained in place until now.

 

Since the summer, we have witnessed a number of fluctuations in the eviction ban. In September, whilst court proceedings reopened, bailiffs were not able to enforce eviction. Furthermore, evictions were only to be served in the most ‘serious [of] circumstances’, not including for rent arrears accrued during the lockdown months.

 

However, in the past few days a new and more pernicious iteration of the eviction ban has arrived. Whilst the government has extended a ban on bailiff evictions for another six weeks — a sticking plaster rather than a solution — they have quietly introduced legislation regarding what constitutes ‘serious circumstances’ to those who are in at least six months of rent debt. Any rent arrears accrued throughout the lockdown are now to be included. This loophole was quietly embedded in the legislation on Friday night, and puts thousands more at risk of losing their homes and their livelihoods.

 

Though current Housing Minister Robert Jenrick said in an interview with the Guardian that ministers had to do more to “help homeless and lonely people”, legislation he has enacted is set to see homelessness spiral out of control in the coming months. It seems the landlord lobby, of which a fifth of Conservative MPs are part of, have won this battle.

 

It is clear that Boris Johnson continues to look out for his elite circle of playmates and them alone. All the while, renters are at risk of losing their homes. Despite these circumstances being partly symptomatic of the pandemic, this shift in housing policy sheds new light on the government’s priorities, clearly reflecting their elitist class interest.

 

In the first lockdown, there was a sense of national unity — echoed in Johnson’s repetitive “thank you” to the country for “doing [our] bit”. But this time round, the spin doctors are clearly bored of the mantra “we’re all in this together”, they’re tired of faking universal rhetoric. To those at the top, we must be regimented back into our individualised way of living.

 

With this in mind, collective tenant organising is now more vital than ever. Tenants’ unions have seen record growth over the past year, and the likes of ACORN, LRU and GMTU have seen tangible wins against the landlord class. This battle on behalf of our communities must continue. Unionising is clearly becoming our only means of confronting authority to keep us safe, reflected in the NEU’s win against the government just last week. Renters' unions must continue to grow, and with it their power to resist evictions and win broader transformative changes to the housing landscape in this country.

 

Lily Gordon Brown is a graduate from the University of Leeds and an active member in ACORN Leeds. Her writing also appears in Tribune Magazine.

 

By Matthew Lee

 

We republish in full Matthew Lee’s excellent essay on the unfolding confrontation between students and university management across the country. It was originally published by the 68 collective.

 

We are in the midst of one of the largest student rebellions since the 1970s¹. 200 students at the University of Manchester have been on rent strike since October 23rd. After occupying an empty university accommodation block they won a 30% first term rent reduction equivalent to at least £4 million — the biggest student rent strike victory in decades. They aren’t stopping there though, having pledged to continue striking in January to win even more, with at least 600 students already pledging to partake. In Bristol, 1400 students have also been withholding rent since October, in what is the largest student rent strike in decades, and have recently won £3.6 million in rent rebates. These students also plan on continuing their rent strike, and 200 additional strikers have already signed up to join next term. These rent strikes have also inspired countless other campaigns to emerge, from Dundee to Portsmouth, with student groups at well over 30 campuses nationally currently organising rent strikes for the new year. Over 500 students at Cambridge, 350 at Sussex, and 300 at UAL are just some of those who have already pledged to strike at their respective universities. At a very conservative estimate, over 5000 students nationwide are now signed up to withhold their next rent payment.

 

The Re-emergence of Rent Strikes

 

The current wave of student rent strikes hasn’t come out of the blue, but rather are part of a more general renewed interest on campuses in rent strikes that has emerged since 2015, starting at UCL. After a successful rent strike at Hakwridge House and Campbell House in 2015, triggered by the poor living conditions, a group of militant students launched the UCL Cut The Rent campaign, in conjunction with other community organisers in London. The aim of the campaign was to target UCL’s high rents and poor accommodation conditions. The Cut The Rent campaign was vibrant and militant, organising a 1000 student-strong rent strike, demos in which they burnt effigies of their Vice Provost Rex Knight, and gained media attention worldwide. They went on to win over £1.85 million in rent rebates, bursaries, and rent freezes. They also inspired rent strikes at Goldsmiths, Courtauld Institute of Art, and the University of Roehampton. The rent strike at Goldsmiths went on itself to win £650,000 in compensation. In an effort to generalise this new wave of student tenant organising a ‘Rent Strike Weekender’ was organized in the summer of 2016, where over 160 students from 25 different campuses came together to learn how to organise and spread student rent strikes. At the same time the Rent Strike network was launched.

 

The Continuation

 

Following the success of 2016, student rent strikes were organised again at UCL in 2017 and 2018, at Sussex in 2017, and at Bristol in 2017 and 2019. Varying in their size and success (although none reached the size of the 2016 strike at UCL), they won victories from minor repairs to £1.5 million in rent cuts and freezes. During this time, student organisers also made a concerted effort in the Rent Strike network to build campaigns on new campuses and help build the base for further waves of rent strikes in later years. Numerous training days, campus workshops, national days of action, free education demo blocs, and national coordination meetings were held, including a second ‘Rent Strike Weekender’ in the summer of 2019, attended by over 100 students from all across the country. Rent Strike network organisers also aimed to spread what they’d learnt internationally, giving talks to student organisers in Ireland, Germany and Italy.

 

The Pandemic

 

In 2020, as we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Britain and made a lot of the organising methods student rent strike campaigners had previously relied upon — such as doorknocking, flyering, etc. — difficult to do. But it also brought about conditions that produced a new wave of struggle and resistance. During the first COVID-19 lockdown, student rent strikes took place in just under a dozen campuses, involving over 2,000 students. These strikes branched out from university-owned accommodation, the focal site of student renter struggles in recent years, to encompass private accommodation providers and landlords in the private sector.

 

One of the most impressive rent strikes occurred in Bristol, organised by their Cut The Rent group. Around 120 tenants that rented through the student letting agency ‘Digs’ withheld their rent. Eventually, 50% of them won rent waivers for the duration of lockdown. Another sizeable strike was organized at Lancaster University by the newly formed Lancaster and Morecambe ACORN branch, involving around 650 students. Although there were attempts to coordinate these strikes and agitate for a widespread use of these tactics, such as through Rent Strike’s COVID-19 handbook, these strikes did not develop into a greater organised movement. Although many won, demands varied in character to previous strikes. They were mostly defensive in nature, calling for such things as the ability to cancel accommodation contracts early or an end to poor provision due to the pandemic. Part of the reason for this can be attributed to the conditions in which this organising took place. Traditional organising methods were made impossible almost overnight by the pandemic, and the timeframes organisers had in which to organise these strikes were extremely tight. Students were also facing pressing issues, which these demands sought to alleviate, creating an atmosphere where it would have been significantly harder to convince student rent strikers not to simply cut their losses once these initial demands had been met. The fact that we therefore saw a wave of rent strikes of this size is, in itself, testament to the hard work of local organisers, and the experimentation of online organising methods during this period has certainly contributed to a collective knowledge that has been used by organisers in the wave of rent strikes currently unfolding. In addition, these strikes proved that rent striking could be utilised at more than just the few universities that the tactic had seemed to have been stuck in during the prior five years. In this sense, despite certain shortcomings, this earlier wave of rent strikes played an important role through being a key stepping stone in the development of the organisation of student tenants.

 

There are many aspects that the student rent strike movement since 2015 can be proud of, and that other movements can take inspiration from. In a period in which, for a large part, the student movement has found itself in decline, student rent strikes have provided a beacon of hope where students have won, and proven militant collective action is the powerful tool in our arsenal. The movement’s focus on ensuring the intergenerational transfer of knowledge is also important — far too often, movements come and go, with a variety of history, tactics and expertise lost in the process. Knowing what’s won before, and what’s been done to win, is key to building movements that last beyond individual organisers. Through the work of the Rent Strike network, generations of student rent strike organisers have worked to ensure this knowledge is recorded and passed down. This has helped lay the groundwork for the movement to continue and grow in strength and ability. Finally, the outward facing nature of the rent strike movement has helped see its influence extend outside of university campuses, and into working-class communities all over. Our movement has not just aimed to win a bit of cash for students then and there, but to more generally learn effective methods of organising and class struggle. Even though, due to certain differences in social composition, rent strike tactics may not be utilised as effectively outside of university spaces, our movement has still produced a number of militant organisers for struggles beyond the campus. This includes individuals who have been directly involved in the formation and building of tenant and community unions that are currently thriving, as well as in other social movements and the labour movement.

 

Lessons Learnt

 

However, there have certainly been areas in which our movement has failed to reach its full potential. The lack of any formal structure for the Rent Strike network has meant that the continuation of our movement has often fallen on a small number of dedicated organisers. Allowing the maintenance of the general mechanisms of the Rent Strike network to be reliant on the actions of a small number of individuals, has not only put the network in a vulnerable position, but also impedes on its ability to coordinate activity to the greatest possible extent. This situation has also created a space often subject to an informal and subtle social hierarchy, making the network’s activity less democratic and accountable in the process ². The failure to create formal structures within the Rent Strike network is, in my opinion, an important issue that must be addressed with urgency if we want our movement to unleash its full potential.

Despite its many successes, the student rent strike movement has also failed to create long-term bastions of support in more than a few campuses, mostly in places where the student movement has been traditionally strong. Although work was put into trying to break out of this situation, and build strength locally in places beyond the typical sites of student struggle, these efforts obviously haven’t been enough, and failed to be intensified. Due to this, the student rent strike movement has previously never reached a point in which it has been strong and coordinated enough to take on capital nationally, and win demands outside a localised setting. However, we find ourselves now in a position where it could be possible to break out of this situation…

 

What Is Happening Now?

 

The situation now is extremely exciting. Not only have we seen first term student rent strikes for the first time in who knows how long, but these strikes are large, militant, already winning big, and spreading at an incredible pace. This is no small part to tireless hard work of student rent strike organisers up and down the country. The combination of an incoming fresher population pre-politicised by movements such as the school strikes for climate and Black Lives Matter, the pre-existent upsurge of interest in rent strikes on campuses since 2015, and the response of universities’ senior management and the government to the COVID-19 pandemic, has created fertile ground for a wave of rent strikes to occur. Additionally, these rent strike campaigns, unlike those at the start of the pandemic, have had more time to make preparations, and have the organising experience and knowledge of prior rent strikes during COVID-19 at their utilisation. These rent strikes are not purely spontaneous events solely brought about by the conditions of our time, but rather an intersection of spontaneity, local initiative, and long-term organising projects, such as that of the Rent Strike network ³.

 

The Expansion

 

What has recently caught most people’s attention is the scale and pace that these strikes are spreading across the country. This is possibly one of the most exciting developments in this wave of rent strikes - 2021 is already set to be the biggest year for student rent strikes in decades. I believe there are a number of key elements responsible for this. The first is the example already set by the rent strikes in Bristol and Manchester. These strikes, both large and militant in character, have shown students not only that it is possible to organise a rent strike, but that it is only through collective, militant action that students can win against the marketised university. The second is the timing of these original strikes. By being organised, and winning, so early on in the academic year, they have helped spawn a number of other campaigns elsewhere also earlier in the year than usual. In the past, copycat campaigns have appeared later in the academic year, when students are typically busier with exams and coursework, and pre-existing student organisers are more burnt out. Thirdly, the militancy of the strikes in Bristol and Manchester — in winning big concessions, and using that as a basis to continue and grow their strikes - has broken constraints in our collective imagination to what can be won by this sort of action, and in doing so has encouraged a concurrent growth in confidence amongst prospective rent strike organisers across the country. The fact that the day after Manchester’s rent strike victory was announced traffic to rent-strike.org increased over seven fold, is just one indication of this. Lastly, it could also be argued that the numerous lockdowns, tiers and all the other restrictions being imposed have assisted in this spread of student militancy too. When you’re stuck inside your room all day, there’s nothing much better to do to pass the time than organising a rent strike!

 

The Initiators

 

Another exciting development that has occurred in this wave of rent strikes, is the fact that the vast majority of them are being led and organised by students (mostly freshers) living in university accommodation. This is a change from the past where rent strikes and housing campaigns on campus were often initiated and led by older student organisers, who themselves no longer lived in university accommodation. This shift is significant. Not only does the positionality of these students place them in the strongest position for successful student tenant organising, but also furthers the possibility for these strikes to spread past traditional strongholds of the student movement, by not relying on an older cadre of organisers, and by being able to be generalised to a greater extent than they ever have before. This high level of self-organisation has also arguably encouraged an organic rank-and-file consciousness. One example of this is the willingness of rent strike campaigns to work outside and against institutional structures (such as that of Student Unions) when these structures do not act in their interest and seek to curtail their militancy.

 

The Demands

 

A further important development to note in this wave of rent strikes is within their demands. In the past, rent strikes have been organised around almost exclusively demands relating to student housing, and specifically within it, rent prices and accommodation conditions. However, within this wave of strikes, we are seeing a number of direct and indirect demands outside this typical realm, with demands emerging relating to cops off campus, university workers, institutional racism, sexual harassment and assault, and the resignation of senior management figures. Although I would believe it incorrect to categorise any of the previous student rent strikes as ‘economist’, the current wider mobilisation of student rent strikers under wider, rather than mostly economic, demands is a very welcome development. Through doing so, these campaigns are proving that rent strikes aren’t a tactic simply confined to housing, but rather a tactic that utilises the collective power of student tenants and can be used for political intervention. This current development is building the base for the potential utilisation of rent strikes in other struggles on campus — such as in solidarity with striking university workers.

 

The Coordination

 

Finally, the coordination occurring in this wave of student rent strikes is an important development. Although in previous years there has been a high level of coordination between student housing campaigns, through the Rent Strike network and other bodies, the level of coordination we are seeing after such a rapid expansion of this movement is quite something. A large part of this can be attributed to the continued agitation and efforts of rent strike organisers at Manchester and Bristol, as well as a wider acknowledgement amongst those involved in this wave of strikes that movement-wide coordination is key to building collective power. Where it could be argued the previous wave of COVID-19 rent strikes failed, this wave of strikes is succeeding, which is a very welcome development indeed. There is important and vibrant discussion constantly happening in the forums that rent strike organisers are using, that are helping to gradually cohere the movement nationally. That being said, the real challenge of coordination will occur in the new year, once rent strikes on other campuses begin, things get busier, and the question of how to continue this level of movement-wide organisation past this academic year and this wave of rent strikes becomes more pressing. It is therefore important that local organisers across the country don’t neglect these coordinating efforts as the year progresses, and maintain and build upon the levels of coordination currently occurring.

 

Considering Potential Perils

 

Despite these exciting developments, which signal the new political possibilities opening up in the realm of student rent strikes, there are also a number of potential pitfalls that, the movement must aim to avoid.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many students to the tipping point, and in the process created a more fertile ground for mobilising students towards militant, collective action such as rent strikes. However, it’s important, in regards to long-term organisation, that we don’t frame our demands and tactics as being solely produced by certain exceptional circumstances created by the COVID-19 crisis. Although it’s hard to envisage at the moment, there will (hopefully) be a time in the near future where these pandemic conditions no longer exist. If we play too much on the exceptionality of our current circumstances, and into rhetorics of how we deserve certain demands because of the current deviation from normality, then we risk reinforcing and legitimising the system that puts us into constant crisis. Student housing, and more generally, the concept of rent, was exploitative before we were launched into this pandemic⁴. By framing demands and tactics as being a result of a lack of normality, we are contributing to the formation of a political consciousness that argues that ‘normal’ was tolerable, and consequently, will take us as a movement backward. We must accentuate the importance of building a collective consciousness that is against rent and the capitalist housing system in and of itself, and not sacrifice this project in pursuit of short term gains and mobilisations.

 

In a similar vein, it is also important that we also don’t fall into consumerist arguments in our organising. We don’t organise rent strikes because of a failure of contract, or because a ‘service’ has reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, but because we are against the very existence of rent itself. As it was so well put in the Rent Strike network’s COVID-19 handbook, “we don’t just strike for ourselves; buried within every rent strike is not just the hatred of a particular landlord, but the property-owning class in itself, as a whole. Exposing this part-in-the-whole and the whole-in-the-part is what unleashes class consciousness, the necessary condition for the building of class power, and ultimately the overthrow of capitalism”⁵. In maintaining a rent strike movement that is focused on building class power, we must reject arguments and slogans that exist within the remit of capitalism’s logic, and always start from the basis that changing the housing system means making foundational changes to the political and economic structures of society ⁶. We must therefore aim to use tactics that are outside and/or aim to subvert current legal, economic and social structures, and make demands that aim to transform student housing, and thus push our movement forward by opening up new terrains of struggle, rather than allowing capital to pacify and manage our dissent.

 

Following from this, it is important we ensure that those being recruited into rent strikes are politicised by them, rather than just passively involved. This is not only to ensure that the strike can be as victorious as possible, as a politicised population of rent strikers opens up more possibilities for blockades, pickets, and other forms of disruptive mass escalation tactics, but also ensures that our rent strike organising doesn’t lead to a political dead end. The aim of organising student rent strikes, as previously mentioned, shouldn’t be to solely win some extra cash for students in halls, but rather also to unleash class consciousness, and build class power, through the process of taking militant collective action. Reflecting on the victorious student rent strike at King’s Road accommodation at the University of Sussex in December 2017, organised through the then-nascent ACORN Brighton branch, Cant argues that despite its £64,000 victory, “the Kings Road strike didn’t generate a viable base. The student rent strikers had failed to take on the organising burden of their campaign, didn’t participate in branch meetings or support other tenants, and very few became dues-paying members of the union. The strike had proven the concept of a renters’ union…but didn’t result in lasting organisational gains”⁷. Although Cant’s reflection is focused on the use of the King’s Road rent strike in building their local ACORN branch, his account is a good example of why more generally we must take every opportunity to engage rent striking students in the organising process, to emphasise the importance of their involvement in directing the strike, and using this activity to politicise them. We can do this in a number of ways, such as creating mass democratic structures through which decisions around the rent strike can be made by those on strike, and refusing to act as service providers in our organising, instead focusing on encouraging and empowering student tenants’ to collectively take up this organising themselves. Given their expected size, it would be particularly unfortunate for the true potential of this upcoming wave of rent strikes’ mass character to go untapped, as has happened in strikes past.

 

Finally, it’s also important we acknowledge the different circumstances under which this organising is taking place with COVID-19, and prepare to overcome the new challenges that will come when this pandemic ends (if and when that ever happens!). This means ensuring successful student rent strike organising methods from the pre-COVID-19 era are passed down into the collective memory of current organisers, and ensuring this organising history is recorded and written down, to be made accessible to future generations of organisers. I would argue that the greatest part of the responsibility for this task lies upon those of us who organised rent strikes prior to the COVID-19 crisis.

 

Rent Strike Futures: What Else Can Come Out of This?

 

This current wave of rent strikes is exciting not just for its current potential, but also for the future organising they could inspire and open up. With this wave of rent strikes, we should aspire to solidify a strong network of student organisers, who will be able to utilise the huge wave of student rent strikes this year to build upon its gains, and further generalise the movement in years to come, as well as cement the tactic of rent striking within the general student consciousness.

 

For A Deeper Investigation Into the University

 

Further to this, let’s use this wave of rent strikes to locate more points in which we can disrupt the running of the higher education sector. With student rent strikes, we have found a way to disrupt the workings of the financialised university to defend our interests and make gains, through restricting the flow of capital that is so necessary for our institutions to function under the current system. We should not be complacent with this discovery though — quite the opposite. We should use this discovery and the success of the student rent strike movement as inspiration, for further detailed inquiry, between both students and workers, into the composition of the financialised university, locating where our strengths and weaknesses lie, as well as that of the university itself. We also must understand the position of students in the financialised university, and more widely, under capitalism, as well as internal contradictions and conflicts within the student population, if we are to successfully build a powerful, partisan student movement, firmly on the side of the working class. I don’t know through what conversations the renewed focus on rent striking as a tactic within the university emerged back in 2015, but as previous revolutionaries have spelt out for us, there can be no politics without inquiry⁸, and we must prioritise a greater understanding of the student and university worker populations, and the functioning of our university itself, if we want to help build student and workers’ movements within the university that can take on, and stay ahead of the forces of capital that seek to control and discipline our movement and its tactics.

 

 

---

 

1. Goddard, E. (2011). An Incomplete History of Protest at the University of Sussex 1971-1975.
2. Freeman, J. (2013). ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness’. Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41:3/4, pp. 231-246.
3. Nunes, R. (2017). ‘It Takes Organisers to Make a Revolution’. Viewpoint Magazine.
4. Lavin, T. (2020). The Good Landlord is a Myth or, Why Landlordism is Inherently Exploitative (via Greater Manchester Housing Action).
5. Rent Strike (2020). Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: Rent Striking Under the COVID-19 Crisis.
6. Madden, D. and Marcuse, P. (2016). In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis. Verso: London.
7. Cant, C. (2018). ‘Taking What’s Ours: an ACORN Inquiry’. Notes from Below, Issue 3.
8. Emery, E. (1995). ‘No Politics Without Inquiry: A Proposition for a Class Composition Inquiry Project 1996-7’. Common Sense: Journal of the Edinburgh Conference of Socialist Economists, Vol. 18.

 

 

 

Matthew Lee is a postgraduate student in Sociology at LSE, organising with the Rent Strike network and various student-worker solidarity campaigns.

 

 

By Isaac Levin Schtulberg

 

In mid-September university students across the UK left their collective isolation to begin a new year at university. For many, this brought hope and excitement — a year promised to be of the same quality as any prior, with sociable societies, safe face-to-face learning and an abundance of the opportunities associated with starting university. The suspension of in-person teaching within the first week of term quickly clarified to students that these were false promises. In the four months that followed, university management faced furious students, growing rent strike movements and, in the case of the University of Manchester (UoM) where the furore has been felt most strongly, disruptions to the university’s power/finance structure. 

 

I had the opportunity to discuss this with Lotte Marley, a founding member of UoM Rent Strike. UoM Rent Strike is the student group which, in light of the pandemic, withheld rent payments from UoM in order to demand rent cuts, a penalty free early release clause and improved housing standards. We discussed why these protests started, how they succeeded and what lessons can be given to the 35 other universities with students embarking on rent strikes. 

 

“Broken fridges, pests, mould and students sleeping in hallways”. Lotte described her accommodation in terms befitting a Tripadvisor review of a dingy youth hostel. University halls in Fallowfield average £590 per month per person, almost double the £356/person average for student houses in the same area. It was this, coupled with poor housing standards, that sparked the inferno Vice-Chancellor Nancy Rothwell has faced this year. From freshers week onwards, events unfolded that sullied UoM’s reputation to such an extent that all demands were met, including a 30% rent rebate valued at £4 million. 

 

The ambition of groups like UoM Rent Strike and its allies is to “evolve over time to oppose university marketisation”. Here and now though, with growing rent strikes across UK universities, it is worth reflecting on why the Manchester rent strike won. Applying the lessons learned in Manchester across the whole movement will not only ensure that these victories carry through into the second semester at UoM, but are mirrored nationwide. 

 

While in the past, mobilising students in sufficient numbers may have been a core challenge for student protest groups, this year was different. The COVID-19 crisis has brought clarity to the underlying problems which students face on a yearly basis: extortionate housing prices, overpriced tuition fees and poor quality university services. These problems permeate a student’s existence, but the current situation has brought them to the fore in such a way that students could not remain silent. “Housing was our way in” Lotte explained, “but the problem is so much bigger than that”. The magnitude of student concerns, from their general experience and treatment during the pandemic, has made 52% of students more politicised according to the NUS.

 

Yet it wasn’t enough to simply recruit a large quantity of rent strikers — the example of the University of Bristol rent strike, where a far larger group failed to have their demands met shows this. “You have to hit them where it hurts, the finances”, a hit on university finances that goes beyond a few weeks' lost rent, but challenges the heart of its business model: reputation and tuition fees. Lotte explained that genuinely challenging UK university’s finances is “all about using the media''. Progress hinged on activists gaining media attention to stain the university’s reputation, jeopardizing future admissions and revenue.

 

So, how did this play out in Manchester, practically speaking? Initially, the primary challenge for UoM Rent Strike was a lack of recognition, “The university refused to speak with us, they wouldn’t even recognise our existence”. This policy of neglect gave the media little to report and thus, UoM Rent Strike’s efforts were largely in vain. 

 

The solution was to become too visible to be ignored. Escalating the struggle, 15 rent strikers occupied the asbestos filled, derelict Owens Park Tower on campus — a building visible all across Fallowfield. By occupying the structure and hanging banners from it, the rent strike became as impossible to ignore as the building itself. Suddenly, the strikers were not just an abstract community withholding payments to the university, but a palpable group defying the university by risking their health for the organisation's demands. The consequence of this visibility was that the university suddenly felt the heat from the onslaught of media publishing their solidarity with students. 

 

 

Throughout the first semester the university escalated their repression — putting £11,000 into fencing for the Fallowfield campus and later calling on Greater Manchester Police to be a semi-permanent presence. This purposefully instilled fear into students, illegally stifled protest and harassed students for doing simple chores like laundry. 

 

This police state-like treatment of students was amongst a series of blunders made by the University. Its desire to fence students in after the tragic suicide of first year student, Finn Kitson, was tone-deaf. Enhanced policing on campus created the conditions that allowed for the appalling spectacle of security racially profiling Zac Adan by inexplicably pinning him against a wall. Rothwell’s overt lie on BBC Newsnight over falsely claiming that she had contacted Zac to apologise humiliated the university further. These blunders, coupled with the pressure of the student protests continued to drive the media cycle, tarnishing UoM’s reputation to such an extent that a fear set in. A terror so strong that any for-profit organisation would U-turn in the name of damage limitation; the risk of reduced inflow of new customers, and thus, fear of lost revenue. “It was all over social media,” Lotte explained, “UoM students complaining about their experience and year 13s openly deciding against applying for Manchester due to their actions.” By becoming impossible to ignore, and astutely exploiting the university’s blunders, the strikers had sowed the seeds of the university’s capitulation.

 

 

 

Universities elsewhere may not be so foolish as to simultaneously ignore and mistreat students while they express their concerns. However, the Manchester experience teaches rent strikers a crucial lesson — the largest risk to any university is a loss of reputation and subsequent reduction of future admissions. Other rent strikes must, by any means necessary, use the media to emulate the visibility of Manchester's campaigners. With protest visibility follows media attention, forcing universities to realise the revenue at stake. 

 

Most people are not in a position to oppose universities so directly, however, speaking with Lotte clarified the necessity of imploring students, parents and the general public to openly voice disgust with how universities are treating students. Universities must understand that their treatment of students is a primary concern for those applying to university. Only when we, the residents of this country, show a refusal to pay tuition fees of £27,725 to universities who mistreat students can we expect a genuine change in university culture. A change from students being customers to extract revenue from, into one where students and university staff receive the treatment and respect we afford to one another; deserving to have their thoughts considered, their health and wellbeing assuredly prioritised.

 

You can follow and support the rent strike movement via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

 

Isaac is a Politics and Philosophy undergraduate at the University of Manchester, a researcher for the Peterloo Institute think tank and a volunteer at Greater Manchester Housing Action.

 

5 January 2021

 

By Joe Beswick (@joebeswick1)

 

The withdrawal of the state from the provision of (council) housing is perhaps the primary cause of the deep housing crisis which limits lives for millions of us in the UK. But over the past decade this withdrawal has in some ways begun to shift. If articles in the progressive press are to be believed, council housing is back, and local authorities are once again beginning to build homes at scale. With Shelter estimating a need for 3.1 million new social homes over the next twenty years, this could be an extremely welcome development.

 

Taking just the Guardian, over the past few years articles have appeared exploring ‘How one council is beating Britain's housing crisis’, and inviting us to ‘Meet the councils quietly building a housing revolution’,  through their ‘innovative projects to provide social housing’. All of these articles refer to the rapid rise of what have become known as Local Housing Companies (LHCs). When Manchester council announced its intention to establish an LHC, GMHA issued a cautious welcome to the news, suggesting that it could be representative of renewed ‘municipalism’.

 

So what are Local Housing Companies, and do they represent a much-needed return to the era of municipal social housebuilding? As part of my recently completed PhD, I conducted an in depth analysis of the rise of LHCs in London. I found that 70% of councils in London have or are in the process of setting up LHCs, and in this article I outline why LHCs are being established, what homes they are building, and whether they constitute the incipient financialisation of social housing. Despite a strong narrative to the contrary, my findings show that, in reality, LHCs have not been set up to primarily meet the need to build social housing, but rather to generate income to replace revenue streams lost to austerity cuts.

 

In essence, an LHC is a private company set up by a council to buy or build housing for sale or rent. While the companies are often ‘wholly owned’ by the council, they are not part of the council per se, but rather an independent private legal entity, governed by a board of directors, which is an asset of the council.

 

LHCs are cleverly positioned as representing a renaissance in council housebuilding, driven by a desire for councils to get back into the business of (social) housebuilding. However, a clear finding of my research has been that this masks the primary motivation which has led to councils establishing LHCs. After a decade of austerity, many councils struggle to maintain the income they need to deliver services, and it is in this context that they are establishing LHCs. I found that LHCs, for a great many councils who have established them, are being set up to generate income to fund general services; to be a source of revenue (profit) to replace revenue streams lost to austerity. Local authorities are becoming private housing developers to generate profit.

 

Traditionally council housing is built and managed by a part of the council governed by what’s called the Housing Revenue Account (HRA). This account is ring fenced, and generally speaking, all social housing owned by the council must be held in this account. LHCs are not part of the HRA, and indeed my research found that a further motivation for establishing LHCs has been to evade the restrictions posed by the HRA. Homes held in the HRA must be social housing (the HRA cannot build private homes), and the homes must be available for the right to buy scheme. Tenants ability to buy homes at a discount makes housing development financially risky for councils, and what’s more, until recently, borrowing to build in the HRA has been artificially constrained by an austerity ‘debt cap’ imposed on HRAs by central government, further limiting council’s capacity to build social homes. LHCs enable councils to build private homes, not subject to the right to buy, or significant borrowing restrictions.

 

Once we recognise that for many councils LHCs are designed to generate significant income, it becomes unsurprising that, although positioned as such, most LHCs (in London at least) are building few or no social homes. My research found that more than two thirds (68%) of London councils with LHCs did not intend to build any social rented housing with their companies. However, 63% of councils intend to build private homes for market rent and sale through their LHCs, with 47% of councils intending to predominantly build private homes, and 16% exclusively. Beyond social rented and private homes, 68% of councils are also intending to use their vehicles to build affordable rent homes (private rented homes let at 50-80% of market rent). Based on my findings, while a significant development in municipal housing policy, LHCs do not represent a significant step towards building the number of social homes that we need. LHCs are often simply councils setting themselves up as property developers, with the same objective as those developers: making cash.

 

When trying to understand why LHCs are not in fact building social housing, the need to generate significant income from building private homes is perhaps most prominent. However, there are two additional reasons why LHCs are unlikely, in the present political context, to build social homes at anything like the scale we need.  First, LHCs have been established almost entirely without the financial support of, or the direction of, central government. Building social housing requires (often very significant) up-front investment or subsidy. Although it generally pays for itself in the long run, building a social home in London, for example, requires more than £100,000 of up-front subsidy. Whether through the HRA or an LHC, social housing requires investment from central government, and so without that investment, which has been hugely reduced in recent decades, LHCs are financially unable to build social housing at a large scale.

 

I also found that, generally speaking, if councils were to build and manage social rented council housing at scale through LHCs it would be, in an important sense, illegal. Council housing has to, by law, be held by the HRA. The legal advice around LHCs is that if councils build social housing through their LHCs, then that housing will be in fact be counted as part of the HRA, and so subject to the right to buy and all other regulations which govern it, which the LHCs are being set up to evade. Building social housing through an LHC would defeat the point of establishing an LHC in the first place. LHCs can and are building ‘affordable’ homes, discount homes which are not let to people on the social housing waiting list, and for rents higher than social rent. These affordable homes do meet a housing need for some, but for those in most need of genuinely affordable housing – social rented housing - LHCs do not constitute an answer to the housing crisis.

 

A final crucial question we need to ask of the rise of the LHC model of council development is whether it represents a further step in the nascent financialisation of social housing in the UK. With councils making repeat visits to the MIPIM property investment fair, and social housing estates being controlled through PFI deals by offshore investors, social housing is slowly being captured by private financiers and held for its value as a financial asset. My research found that some LHCs were being used to transfer the ownership of the estates – usually on a long lease –  to private equity funds and other private investors, and so represented a clear case of social housing financialisation. This risk, and the well documented consequences of housing financialisation, must be at the forefront of activists’ minds when they are engaging with, or challenging, the establishment of LHCs. However, generally speaking I found that councils were funding LHCs using traditional routes – borrowing from central government – and so at this stage, the financialisation of municipal homes through LHCs is only at the outside edge of LHC policy.

 

So what should we make of LHCs? They are a policy forged in deep austerity, and in the context of decades of deeply anti-municipal and anti-social housing policy in Westminster. Clearly representative of the ‘entrepreneurial’ trend in local governance, LHCs represent councils going it alone in a desperate attempt to become private property developers to offset the losses they have experienced over the past ten years. Despite clever narratives to the contrary, they will not boost social housing numbers in a sizeable way, and will not significantly lessen the housing crisis anywhere that they are set up. This is not to say that LHCs are in all cases a mistaken policy choice – there is a great breadth within them, and some are set up to build significant numbers of affordable homes, which while not social rented housing does help meet housing need for some underserved groups in the housing system. But they are far from the renaissance in council housing that they have been presented as. What is clear however, in the present political economic context in the UK, and the deep austerity which is likely to be the consequence of the coming recession, LHCs are likely to be a feature of council policy for some time. Understanding them and what they represent will be an important task for activists and campaigners engaged in the struggle for a fairer housing system, as we fight for more genuinely affordable social housing.

 

 

Joe Beswick is a member of the London Renters Union, former housing and land researcher at the New Economics Foundation and has just completed a PhD on the financialisation of social housing.

 

This piece was made possible thanks to support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

 

2 January 2021

 

By Beth Stratford (@beth_stratford)

 

 

Beth Stratford is co-author of 'Land for the Many', a fellow at the New Economics Foundation, and a co-founder of the London Renters Union. She is currently writing a PhD about tackling rent extraction and reprogramming the economy for a finite planet.

 

This piece was made possible thanks to support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

 

By Siobhan Donnachie (@Siobhan_e_d)

 

 

To most people, receiving a letter from your Landlord stating you are entitled to a significant rent reduction would seem like a cruel and sadistic joke. Last month my housemates and I received a letter from the real estate company managing our apartment saying our rent would be cut by a whopping third, from December 1st 2020. I currently live in Berlin where a landmark rent control or rent ceiling (Mietendeckel) is being passed — which is set to affect 340,000 apartments in the city, around 1 in 6 tenants.

 

The rent control proposed is radical, not only calling for rent stabilisation through establishing maximum rent ceilings, but also lowering existing rents. If successful, the Mietendeckel could provide a model to be adapted for other cities, particularly in the UK. Rent controls however seem to fill the real estate industry, landlords, investors and neoliberal minded folks with intense fear. When Sadiq Khan focused his mayoral campaign earlier this year on rent controls, the landlord and real-estate lobby were up in arms. Similar reactions sparked up in Manchester after a joint report in 2019 from The RSA (Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) and the housing association One Manchester, stipulated that a soft form of rent control was needed to resolve housing inequality in the city. Yet, rent controls are widely popular, last year 71% of the British public were in favour of the Labour Party’s pledge to establish them. 

 

It is important to note that rent controls are not some new radical policy, the private rented sector in the UK was regulated for most of the 20th century. The regulation of rent for new private tenancies was only abolished in 1989, under the Thatcher government, hell bent on the deregulation and privatisation of housing to create a passive ‘property owning democracy’. The successive deregulatory policies of governments has created our present day situation — an atomised rental market dominated by small scale landlordism. 

 

When considering the Mietendeckel as a potential model for the UK, the difference in the private rental market and the power of tenants has to be reflected upon. In Berlin alone, 84% of residents are privately renting, whereas in Manchester it is around 20% and in London 30%. A higher security of tenure (unlimited expiry or long fixed term tenancies), extensive protection from eviction and protective legislation provides the strong base for tenant organising here in Germany. Less tenant protections in the UK is not the only cause of our obscene insecurity and eviction levels — the intersection of higher ownership levels and a deregulated private rented sector is also a key factor. ‘Generation Rent’ found that when house prices increase, no-fault evictions also increase, with landlords evicting to sell up or bring in new tenants with higher market rent. This instability has acted as a major obstacle to organising renters in the private sector.  

 

However, Berlin is in no way a renters paradise. Similarly to the UK, for many of those renting here, myself included, the reality is often a precarious rental situation, sometimes moving from one sub-let to another several times in one year. The saturation in the rental market has been facilitated by the over demand and under supply of affordable housing and the huge flows of speculative capital into the city. 

 

Berlin, like many global cities, has experienced a dramatic increase in rents, 60% in fact since 2011. The city is certainly no stranger to the neoliberal financialised growth model of housing and urban development — a large proportion of the city is owned by real estate millionaires. This has partly been enabled by massive sell offs of municipal housing stock in the early 2000’s, paving the way for the domination of global financial actors such as Blackstone, and other private equity or pension funds. In Berlin, the British Pears Brothers collected at least $53 million in over inflated rents and sales in 2017, while using standard real estate loopholes and shell companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Luxembourg and paying only a reported $197,000 in taxes on that income. 

 

The Mietendeckel is not the first policy to try and tackle rising rents. In 2015 a rent brake (or Mietpreisbremse) was legislated for across Germany. Cities like Berlin established a rent index of comparative median rents, and if your new rental contract was 10% over this you had grounds to legally challenge the rent. The legislation was mostly ineffective in tackling the situation, and landlords easily circumvented the rent brake. A strong grassroots renters movement in the city, in particular Mietenwahnsinn — Stoppen (stop the rent madness), has been pivotal in swaying public opinion towards a radical rent cap and supporting the political coalition of Die Linke, The Greens and The Social Democrats to push through the Mietendeckel in the Berlin House of Representatives in January at the beginning of 2020. However, as the legislation unfolds, it could sadly show how fighting the stranglehold of global finance upon housing is a far greater challenge than we thought. 

 

 

The Mietendeckel came into effect in February 2020, and as of November 23rd landlords have a legal obligation to give the rent decrease if applicable. It includes all residential apartments across the city, with the one exemption of those constructed or ready for rental post 2014. The city has established a rent table of maximum rents, depending on modernisation, location and size. If a tenant’s rent exceeds the rent ceiling outlined by more than 20 per cent they are entitled to a rent reduction, and those below this cannot have their rent increased for 5 years, thereafter only increasing by inflation at around 1.3%. Landlords who refuse to meet regulations and reduce the rent can face an eye watering fine of up to 500,000 euro. 

 

But Berlin is holding its breath for now after legal challenges posed to Germany’s Federal Court of Justice — the Bundesgerichtshof (the highest court of ordinary jurisdiction) — from the real estate lobby, supported by the political coalition of the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). The challenges proposed are whether the Mietendeckel is compatible with the German Constitution and its fundamental right to property, and whether Berlin on a federal level can legally even implement it. A ruling has been estimated for April to June next year, with the decision going one of four ways: uphold the legislation; tweak the law (most probably appealing to landlord profits); strike it down in its entirety but allow tenants to not pay back reduced rent for the period; or strike it down and allow landlords to recoup ‘‘underpaid’ rent back in full. At this stage it is very unclear what the court's decision will be, and for now tenants are advised to put aside the differences in rent in case they have to pay it back. 

 

If the Mietendeckel is successfully legislated for, it will mount a serious challenge to the current speculative model of housing that benefits both huge global financial actors and smaller landlords. It is important to note that landlords can apply for a hardship clause, enabling them to keep the same rental price, only if they can prove they are not financially profiting, which is the key part of this all. In order to provide fair rents, the right to a home needs to be defended, whilst treating homes as assets needs to be attacked and dismantled.

 

 

Fighting the mainstream economic narrative around rent control is not an easy task. The commonly used argument — ‘rent controls reduce incentives to maintain existing housing or construction of new housing, skewing supply and demand’ is always heavily weaponized to defend profits. The ‘anti-building’ narrative has been very powerful in the debate around the Mietendeckel in Berlin, and opposition parties have maintained that it will scare away investors in existing stock and new construction. Online real estate portal Immoscout published an analysis in mid-October, stating that the number of rental apartments on offer fell by 41.5 percent within twelve months, adding that this was due to the drop in apartments on the market pre-dating 2014. It seems that as real estate companies see shrinking profits in older residential housing stock, they are shifting their investments to newer construction. ‘Deutsche Wohnen’ one of the largest real estate companies in Berlin (estimated to own 120,000 apartments in the city), have already turned their focus to buying up new buildings and investing in new construction. 

 

The myth around rent controls scaring away investors, is just that, a myth. In the context of the Mietendeckel and to highlight this, The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung uses the example of the Swedish investor, Heimstaden, who recently agreed to purchase 130 Buildings, 4000 apartments at 830 million euros - 200,000 euros average per apartment. Heimstaden stated that they have factored in the Mietendeckel to their profit margins, and still see it as a lucrative investment.

 

If anything the Mitendeckel will be less effective due to the dominance of a model that exploits tenants for maximum profits. The blame does not only lie with global financial actors, some smaller landlords have of course sought out loopholes, and in some cases chosen to only rent to ‘foreigners’ who are less able to assert or know their rights. There are many cases already of landlords using ‘shadow rents’ so they can still charge tenants higher rates. ‘Shadow rents’ come in a number of forms, such as exaggerating prices of inventories for furnished apartments, over inflation of operating or maintenance costs, or the sneaky practice of placing a higher rent and a lower rent on new contracts — so if the Mitendeckel is not passed the higher rent can remain in place. These practices range in use from small landlords to real estate giants like Deutsche Wohnen, who continue to shamelessly exploit the housing market in Berlin.

 

 

To argue that rent control in Berlin would present severe financial risk for property owners is an over exaggeration to say the least. In the context of the UK, nearly half of landlords own their renters’ home outright i.e. without a mortgage, emphasising the point that landlords treat property and renters as a way to accumulate large profits. This is not to say that all smaller landlords, or those who own one property will not face a serious financial hit through rent controls. But, for those of us who have forked out thousands and thousands to live in often very poor standards of housing, our sympathies for landlords do not stretch far, if at all. The fundamental right to housing, is not just to declare it as a right and provide negligible liberal reform, it needs to be a direct challenge to the system itself — and if that is to eradicate the profits of landlords and real estate, so be it. 

 

However, the Mietendeckel, even if successful, is not enough to combat the exploitation tenants face, or the rapid gentrification of the city. Citizens are fighting for greater demands to stop inflating rental prices, community displacement and gentrification. Most notably the campaign to expropriate privatised housing back into public hands, radically calling for the democratic remunicipalisation of the city's housing stock. The Mietendeckle, or any form of rent control is not the sole solution to housing inequality. Both in Berlin, and in our own cities in the UK we desperately need reforms to land use rules, transformative public housing programmes, and support for cooperative and community led housing. 

 

Sadly the possibility of the UK getting close to these ‘utopian’ housing policies is not so within our grasp. The Mietendeckle has got this far through the demands of a strong tenant-led movement here in Berlin. That is not to say that we should not be demanding for rent controls, there is clearly the political space and popular appeal for such policies. The renters movement in the UK is growing in strength, but its focus should be on securing; greater protections, stable long term tenancies and eradicating no-fault evictions. But winning these legislative changes for tenants is possible even under a Tory government — and once we have this, our power as renters will grow and we can begin to effectively dismantle our polarising and unequal housing market.

 

Siobhan Donnachie is a coordinator of Greater Manchester Housing Action, and currently resides in Berlin.

 

With thanks to Jacob Mukherjee for his comments on an earlier draft. Cover photo credit: Amit Kubi.

 

This piece was made possible thanks to support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

 

29 December 2020

 

By Greater Manchester Housing Action (@gmhousingaction)

 

 

Earlier this year we published a piece on our site, ‘The Good Landlord is a Myth’ by ACORN Liverpool member Tom Lavin. The piece sought to take to task the oft-heard distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ landlords — sometimes used even by housing NGOs — in order to lay bare the exploitation that sits at the heart of landlordism.

 

The problem with the good landlord/ bad landlord approach is it forecloses the possibility of a more structural critique of landlordism. By focusing on the rotten apples, we miss sight of the broader picture — that landlords make their money not through the production of anything useful, but by parasitically taking the wages earned by workers in the form of rent. The whole system by its very nature is exploitative. It’s set up to allow those with access to capital to live off the work of others through parasitic rent-seeking. 

 

This has been starkly revealed by the pandemic. As millions struggle to meet their rent as jobs losses mount; landlords sit pretty, safe in the knowledge that the government — and the law — is on their side. Indeed, one notable interest that has sailed through this pandemic relatively unscathed has been landlords. There is a naked injustice that rots the heart of our society: the contradiction between landlords and their tenants.

 

To cap off our series of discussions where we have explored tactical and strategic questions facing the organised renters movement; we are excited to announce the publication in print of Tom’s essay.

 

Our hope is that this pamphlet will become a tool for political education and discussion. We hope tenants unions, trade unions, Labour and other party branches, and community groups will consider holding reading and discussion groups — so please get in touch if you want support facilitating these!

 

As a movement we must expand our critical horizon beyond simply bad landlords to the very mechanics of rent itself; and this pamphlet represents one of our contributions to this goal.

 

The Myth of the Good Landlord

£4 each (includes p&p).

 

Details on how to order: Please send money via paypal to paypal.me/gmhousingaction, let us know you are buying 'The Myth of the Good Landlord', be sure to un-click 'paying for goods or services' (so we don't lose 30p to Paypal fees!), and include your address. We’ll get it posted out to you!

 

10 December 2020

 

By Greater Manchester Labour for a Green New Deal (@mcrLabGND)

 

Recently, a group of climate activists from Manchester Labour for a Green New Deal have made headlines across local and national outlets for their ingenious plans to retrain out of work theatre workers to retrofit homes to address the climate crisis. GMHA has long been in favour of mass retrofitting in our region, to create jobs, improve housing quality and increase energy efficiency. Here we sit down with some of the organisers to discuss their work.

 

 

 

 

Photo credit, Alex King.

 

4 December 2020

 

By Lily Gordon Brown (@lilygbrown)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This piece was made possible thanks to support from the Rosa Luxemburg Siftung.