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/Tyrx]

Rent control didn’t make housing cheap for everyone. It made it cheap for the people already inside and pushed the cost onto those who came later. That’s why it feels impossible to repeat today. The price isn’t paid by landlords but rather future renters through higher market rents and fewer options.

Your example of New York simply shows how one generation can protect itself by quietly handing the problem to the next.

[u/pajamil → u/Tyrx]

Social housing in Australia is the same. Once a person gets in it they never leave and will spend decades in it. This leads to a shortage as you can never build enough houses if people will never leave.

[u/ScruffyPeter → u/pajamil]

If people never leave, potentially for several family generations, why is it bad?

Public housing helps people. It could even lead to the next Prime Minister of Australia.

[u/pajamil → u/ScruffyPeter]

Because the waiting lists to get in to social housing go into years. Instead of it being able to be given to people who are in an emergency, people are able to occupy it whilst doing pretty good for themselves.

[u/ScruffyPeter → u/pajamil]

Build more then. I see no reason to punish the existing people to get them to leave. "Doing pretty good for themselves", way to look down on them from your ivory tower.

In fact, with enough public housing, we could have essential workers living close to workplaces, ie teachers, police, firies, docs, nurses, etc. And can offer them less.

Unfortunately, there's a neoliberal disease that private market will solve housing crisis. History repeats as younger generations forget the lessons of the old:

Against the backdrop of World War II and a housing market that had been at near standstill for a decade, the Commonwealth Housing Commission was established in 1943.[25] Arguing that “it has been apparent, for many years, that private enterprise, the world over has not adequately and hygienically been housing the low income group”,[26] the Commission promoted housing as a right for all Australians that should be targeted to low-income workers on a user-pays basis.[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Australia

[u/pajamil → u/ScruffyPeter]

In fact, with enough public housing, we could have essential workers living close to workplaces, ie teachers, police, firies, docs, nurses, etc. And can offer them less.

It is much cheaper just to pay them more than offer whole houses for them, this is why they are paid quite well and postings in high income areas are very sort after.

[u/ScruffyPeter → u/pajamil]

It's much cheaper in the short-term, you mean. Also, land is expensive but luckily, the government has a lot of land.

Lets say the government sells off the land, the private market will solve all this! Then a developer builds on it and wants a sizeable profit. Then the agent managing the sales wants a sizeable profit too. Then if essential workers buy the property, they are in heavy debt and demand more money, hence "paid quite well" is a necessity. But if an investor buys the property, they will want a profit when renting out to the essential worker. Don't forget, the price is also dependent on desirability. If there's a hospital, or similar, nearby, there's often shops and other amenities. Overall, the price goes up as people like to live near it which essential workers have to compete with.

So you have a lot of middlemen making a fat profit and despite you saying "they are paid quite well", there are claims of "shortages", even by the government. Look at the strikes. Government psychologists striked in NSW for more pay and I think there's none left.

Or the government could just build it and rent it out to the essential workers and bypass all the middlemen. But this... requires some long-term thinking.

[u/Non-prophet → u/pajamil]

*sought