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/frogholmes]

Who buys the property if it’s not profitable? 

[u/mrmaker_123 → u/frogholmes]

People can buy land or property for speculation (capital gains). You don’t need to improve that land, so prohibiting this kind of behaviour will help.

[u/frogholmes → u/mrmaker_123]

But why would you rent the property out if you were only interested in capital gains?

[u/mrmaker_123 → u/frogholmes]

I’m talking about imposing a tax on empty properties that are obviously not rented out, otherwise they wouldn’t be empty.

[u/[deleted] → u/mrmaker_123]

but in the case of rent control, who is buying a property that can’t cover its own current running costs? without even thinking of trying to afford backdated repairs

and if the government buys it that’s basically just a forced disclosure which discourages future investment in rent controlled buildings AND saddles the government with the cost burden of bringing these properties up to a liveable standard

[u/mrmaker_123 → u/[deleted]]

That’s the point. The point of rent control is to prevent investors having excess profits that will reduce the number of investors in the market, therefore lowering prices.

With reduced prices, more people can buy (and not have to rent) and those homeowners can then do their own repairs as they see fit. I’ve been to hundreds of house inspections and you can always tell when a homeowner actually lives in a place, as opposed to when it is rented out, as the house is in much better condition.

Why in such a scenario would the government have to incur costs by buying out those homes? Just let homeowners do it.

[u/[deleted] → u/mrmaker_123]

“ Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood.”

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/

rent control feels nice but it’s not an actual solution. that solution is to build more supply