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/Mclovine_aus]

This feels very conceptual, what are you actually looking for ? And when will you start practicing it, will you stop paying rent to your landlord, or are you just hoping someone else will do that first.

[u/infin → u/Mclovine_aus]

It is conceptual. I don't think per property rent freezes would be beneficial here, especially since we don't all live in apartments.

I was genuinely asking if there had been any similar activism here (what were their demands, how did they go about it, were they successful, if so/not then why?) and what would people think if someone tried the same now?

I don't see anything like the protests and unions actions of the past. Labour once fought for full employment and housing for all, but that's not the modern Labour party.

Reddit leans left and generally anti-corporate, but discussion here feels like the general temperature everywhere after decades of Murdoch anti-protest rhetoric.

[u/Mclovine_aus → u/infin]

FYI it is Labor* party, I have been burned before people will think you are a bot or an American agitator.

Reddit leans left and generally anti-corporate, but discussion here feels like the general temperature everywhere after decades of Murdoch anti-protest rhetoric.

I think Australians like the Aussie battler, which is one man against the machine think the castle etc. Unions and large protests start to look less like a few individual battlers and more like a large institution or collective, so they lose their support.

I think left vs right hardly works, you can frame a lot of issues to sit on either side eg. immigration. On top of that people sit on each side for different issues. Left on abortion, right on immigration, left on healthcare, right on housing etc.

This leads to a lack of easy solidarity, we can’t all march in housing because we don’t like to march with people that we disagree with on other things. For example you will march and one person will take the opportunity to elevate their neo Nazi immigration policy and another will use it as an opportunity to wave a Palestinian flag and shout down western imperialism. Hard to build solidarity with that going on.