Rent hikes won’t fix the housing crisis
The new Labour government has made big announcements on housing policy, but there’s very little there to benefit tenants.
Rent caps lifted for Scotland’s private tenants: organising after defeat
What lessons can be learned in Scotland’s tenant movement?
Review | Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis
Housing activist Kate Bradley reviews Nick Bano’s Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis
Building Red Vienna
Danny Bee celebrates Red Vienna, when workers’ land occupations led to a left-wing city council developing a new vision for public housing and working-class communities.
Review | Union
Grace Linden reviews a recent production of Max Wilkinson’s play Union, directed by Wiebke Green, at the Arcola Theatre in Hackney. Is it useful to construct narratives from individual moral responsibility when discussing gentrification? We all need a home; we’re all (too) willing to take on the options offered by a system that exploits our […]
Base rate rises, housing crises?
‘We need to fight back together and find solidarity across lines that have previously been staged as battle lines.’
The scale of Britain’s housing crisis
Danny Schultz reviews a recent work exploring the scale of exploitative landlordism in Britain, finding an indictment of British capitalism and an urgent call for renter organising.
Landlords need us; we don’t need landlords
Kate Bradley and Charlotte Powell look at what underlies Tory rent reforms, and assess how the housing movement can respond.
Renters reform – much more is needed
Government proposals to overhaul private renting – not good enough.
The Housing Question today
Gus Woody reflects on the importance of Engels’ pamphlet “The Housing Question” today and how socialists can build on it around housing struggle.
Review | Red Metropolis
Danny Schultz reviews Red Metropolis, the latest work by acclaimed political thinker and architectural critic Owen Hatherley. Schultz argues it provides an insightful history of radicalism within London, yet falls short in considering the importance of the working class struggles which make municipal socialism possible. Owen Hatherley, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London […]
Back the sacked Goodlord strikers
The dispute in the referencing department of East London property services company Goodlord has entered a new phase after the firm sacked strikers in their 13th week of industrial action.
The Paris Commune: Rent Strike!
rs21 members present three new translations from Le Cri du peuple (The Cry of the People), the leading newspaper of the Paris Commune.
Berlin Rent Cap overturned, but housing movement has bigger plans
The Rent Cap in Berlin has been overturned by the Federal Constitutional Court. But the policy was created by centre left politicians to undermine a renter led movement to expropriate the cities’ largest landlords. How did this policy come to be? What did it attempt to do? And what does it’s defeat mean for renters and radical housing struggle in Berlin?
Queen Mary University of London – stop evicting students now!
A statement from the QMUL Rent Strike Campaign from early April 2021 opposing evictions from Queen Mary University of London student accommodation.
Revolutionary Reflections | New Frankfurt and the Housing Question
1920s Frankfurt, in the wake of the 1918 German Revolution, established integrated housing, healthcare and education that is still impressive today.
Govanhill: ghettoisation and exploitation in modern Glasgow
Slum housing, hyper-exploitation and racist demagoguery are alive and kicking in the Scotland of 2021 – along with the basis for internationalist solidarity and resistance.
The exception as the rule: Toronto’s social reproduction organising
In Toronto, community organisers are battling Covid in the shadow of colonial racial capitalism.
The power of tenants’ organising
There is a renewed surge of tenants’ organising, but opinions are split on the best way to build power. What kind of organisation can hit back against landlords?
Coronavirus credit crunch: fighting the debt disaster
Through rent arrears, payday loans, mortgages and more, personal debt is a key element of neoliberal policy. How can we fight back and break the spiral?
It didn’t have to be this way
This second lockdown was avoidable. It is critical that we understand the choices made by those in power that led to this, and organise to take management of this crisis out of their hands.
Autonomous space in Berlin: Liebig34, eviction, and gentrification
The violent police eviction of Berlin’s iconic Liebig34 space is the latest event in a never-ending battle between the city’s radical-left counterculture, and the forces of state-aided gentrification.
Covid on campus: rent strike at Bristol university
Universities have brought students back to expensive accommodation and subjected them to inhumane living conditions, with Covid-19 still a risk on campus. rs21 spoke to Connor Nicol, a first-year student involved in organising the Bristol University rent strike.
Video: Fighting back and building power during the Covid crisis
Three separate activists draw lessons from fights to defend working-class lives and livelihoods inside and outside the workplace.
Eviction ban ends: how can renters fight back?
The government is trying to restart evictions just as a second wave of Covid-19 is arriving. We need to escalate our organising against evictions, rent debt and homelessness.
We must act now
As the initially censored Public Health England report makes clear, Covid-19 has exposed the lethal structures of systemic racism in our society. Artwork and text by Katherine Hearst.
Rent strike in the Covid conjuncture?
As the knock-on effects of the Covid-19 pandemic make it impossible for many workers to pay rent while meeting their own basic needs, Allan Struthers examines the prospects for large-scale rent strikes in Britain
Debt in a time of coronavirus
Video: How has coronavirus boosted household debt, the impact on working-class people and on the capitalist economy, and the possibilities for campaigning and resistance?
Organising in response to COVID-19
As criticism of the UK government’s response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic mounts, rs21 members highlight the flourishing grassroots responses that aim to provide support and to demand more effective action from government and employers
Acting on COVID-19
With cases of the pandemic rising rapidly, we cannot rely on government or business to put health before profits. rs21 members have produced a set of actions and demands to campaign around and a summary of the safety legislation can allow workers to take action or leave work.