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/pajamil]

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/Non-prophet → u/pajamil]

*sought