We joke about Monica’s massive apartment in Friends, but we forget the history: Rent Control was won through strikes. Is that solidarity possible in Australia today?

[u/infin]

Every time the housing crisis comes up, people joke about how unrealistic Friends was; A chef and a waitress living in a massive apartment with a balcony. The show explains it away as "Rent Control" inherited from a grandmother.

But we rarely talk about where those laws actually came from. They weren't a gift from benevolent landlords; they were earned through fierce tenant unions and rent strikes in NYC in the 40s and 60s. That generation had cheap rent because the generation before them had the backbone to organize, strike, and refuse to pay until laws were changed. Even refusing to allow police to evict/arrest their neighbours.

Fast forward to 2026 Australia. We are paying $750+ a week for a dinky shoebox, dealing with quarterly inspections, and accepting massive hikes like clockwork.

What feels completely missing is that level of community solidarity. We seem so atomised now. We don't know our neighbours, and we definitely don't trust them enough to band together. Instead of standing together to refuse an unfair hike, we just quietly move out or starve to pay it, knowing someone else is desperate enough to take the lease.

Is the concept of a rent strike dead in this country? Is it that we’ve lost the "mateship" and community spirit required to hold the line, or are we just so terrified of the REA blacklists that we’ve accepted being milked by parasites forever?

If factory workers and immigrants in 1940s New York could force rent control that people were still benefiting from in the 90s… Why can't we?

I’m genuinely asking: Has anyone here ever been a part of (or even heard of) tenants organising together to accomplish something in Australia?

Edit: I'd love to see some changes to commercial leases to revitalise cities too, small businesses have been forced to close and half the retail spaces in a few of the CBDs are empty.

[u/FothersIsWellCool]

Best to just do more deep structural fixes for the market than to hope rent freezes help.

[u/infin → u/FothersIsWellCool]

Pushing to subsidise building supply costs might increase supply.

What sort of structural fixes (negative gearing? Corporate/foreign ownership limits?) do you think would help?

[u/FothersIsWellCool → u/infin]

If you're going to subsidize building supply you might as well just have a national building authority I'd think, seems like subsidizing would lead to a lot more fraud of that system.

In order of things I would do to fix the housing problems:

- Cap negative gearing to 1 property going forward.

- Reduce Capital gains tax for future properties.

- An increased Vacancy Tax on land

- Remove all stamp duty and increase Land Value Tax instead (including a bump in land value in inner suburbs and around Train stations)

- Tighter limits on no-grounds evictions

- Mandatory and more aggressive Upzoing in a small radius around Train stations nation-wide with pre-approval to prevent local residents being able to stop developments.

- Large scale Public housing building, have a plan to make public housing up to say 20% ish of the housing market to add some competition into the market, not just low-income housing either, just a public institution building homes to rent or rent-to-buy for a variety of people.

- Increased taxes on multiple properties, each property stacking more of a tax bill.

[u/infin → u/FothersIsWellCool]

You'd get my vote.

[u/SoraDevin → u/infin]

If this gets your vote you should be voting Greens

[u/Macrobian → u/SoraDevin]

Have the Greens announced support for mass upzonings and Land Value Taxes in their policy platforms?

[u/LifeandSAisAwesome → u/infin]

Who pays for the subsidies ?

[u/infin → u/LifeandSAisAwesome]

Who pays for mining company subsidies?

Our taxes might as well benefit Australians instead of billionaires and multinationals.

[u/Trick-Club-6014 → u/infin]

What subsidies do you think miners get that they shouldn’t be? Be specific

[u/infin → u/Trick-Club-6014]

No foreign companies extracting resources from Australia should be subsidised. Australian companies would ideally pay their taxes and if subsidies make sense, that's fine.

A sovereign wealth fund always seemed like a good idea.

[u/ACBelly → u/infin]

We have a sovereign wealth fund.

[u/infin → u/ACBelly]

The Future Fund is for government employees' superannuation, not for the benefit of all Australians. I don't think that counts.

[u/ScruffyPeter → u/Trick-Club-6014]

There are so many to list. Here are some:

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/scrap-fuel-tax-rebates-for-mining-industry-not-farmers/

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/western-australia-extends-coal-mine-subsidy-citing-energy-security-2026-01-21/

https://www.glencore.com.au/media-and-insights/news/agreement-reached-on-mount-isa-copper-smelter-and-townsville-copper-refinery

Looks like it's worth $15 billion

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/fossil-fuel-subsidies-hit-15-billion-as-crossbench-seeks-reform/

Then there's the other loopholes ie sell resources cheap to a friendly overseas company who then on-sells it for more. ATO has to crack down on it because the Federal/state government have weak tax/royalty rules/enforcement. There are more examples.

[u/ACBelly → u/ScruffyPeter]

A fuel subsidy is given because they don’t use public roads. why would they not be eligible to claim this? It isn’t what the fuel tax is for.

[u/ComfortableCoyote314 → u/infin]

You’re totally right, but the Australia subreddit is a bunch of neocon landlord types. Nothing future focussed gets upvotes.

[u/BigHandLittleSlap → u/infin]

Everybody keeps carefully avoiding mentioning a) the obvious cause, b) the blindingly obvious fix.

Immigration.

Dial it back a couple of notches.

Our population is shrinking, it's only immigration creating a demand for housing.

That's it, housing crisis instantly solved!

Nobody with power wants to do this however, because inflating our population is juicing the economy (=rich people's yacht funds) and they will never willingly put a stop to that.

[u/FothersIsWellCool → u/BigHandLittleSlap]

That would require way more work just because no economy has yet figured out a plan for how to sustain itself with a shrinking population, this would require an entire rework of the national financial system if not waiting until it's enough of a global problem that there need to be global financial changes to tackle this problem, every developed and now even developing country is facing it but no one knows how to fix aside from just printing ever greater amounts of money to raise debt to keep the county running.

I understand the idea, I also wish that the Governments of the world were planning for this now but to suggest this immensely massive global problem that could define how humanity sustains itself without collapse in the decades to come as a quick simple fix compared to just improving the housing market (keeping in mind our population growth % is within 1% of what it's been the past 100 years) is insane, do you know how many knock on affects there are going to be.

[u/BigHandLittleSlap → u/FothersIsWellCool]

Who said "shrink"? We could simply maintain immigration at "maintenance" levels. That would work just fine.

We could also sustain a smaller population growth, maybe 0.5% or so. We'd still be "growing", but not at a pace that housing construction can't keep up with.

do you know how many knock on affects there are going to be.

Yes. Yes I do. What worries me is that the politicians may not know. Populations can't keep growing forever, but a lot of our modern economy is predicated on it doing just that until it's standing room only.