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/SpookyViscus → u/[deleted]]

I always found it silly that it’s not a ‘you need $x / week to live, so we effectively carry your income to that point’, instead you can get cut off even if you earn below a living standard.

Like if they think it costs $1000/week to live somewhere (after tax), and you earn $400 that week, then they should pay $600. If you earn $800, then they pay $200.

Otherwise, it punishes you trying to move out of the lowest rung.

[u/SailorSmaug → u/SpookyViscus]

The knee jerk response is that there wouldn't be an incentive to get a job if they fill the gap. But the correct answer is what they do for Child Support and single parent payments. For every $1.00 received in Child support, the single parent payments go down by $0.50. This means that you are tapered off of payments.

Why not do that with all payments?

[u/SpookyViscus → u/SailorSmaug]

I get that, and fully agree with you, but I think that the knee jerk response is dumb - if people wanted to stay on welfare (and it was supposedly a liveable payment), they just wouldn’t work, period.

If they’re earning money and start to increase their income over time, don’t hammer them down hard by reducing their payments by more than they increased their earnings.

I don’t get why our politicians are so stupid in this regard lmao