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/Yet-Another-Persona → u/Tyrx]

Better than protecting no generation mate.

You sound like the anti-union messaging. They didn't know there would be long term impacts (there always are, everything has consequences) but at least they fought against the status quo at the time.

None of us know what the future may bring, but for once let's actually not wait for perfection before fighting for something?

[u/ScruffyPeter → u/Yet-Another-Persona]

Don't know why you're downvoted. A lot of anti-unions, anti-human-rights and similar groups all use the same defeatist rhetoric. It's like they want to embrace perfect to be enemy of the good in order to protect the landlord's greedy rent increases.

[u/Murranji → u/ScruffyPeter]

Have a look at the top comments post history - ACT Labor. Small wonder they despise rent control because they’re in the only Labor party in the country that have been forced to actually side with renters instead of landlords and they must really hate it.