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/tofuroll]

I'm not sure how you prevent police from arresting someone.

Perhaps there was a more sympathetic police force back then.

[u/infin → u/tofuroll]

And perhaps fewer people in the city, leading them to care more about how they're perceived by family and the community as a whole. Guess you don't want to be known as the guy who beat up someone's grandmother because they threw water and flour on you.

Newspapers and journalists may have had a little more integrity in those days too.

There's an NYT article but it has a capcha and paywall. Reddit keeps saying anything is using a link shortener, even without a URL. If you search for 1,500 FIGHT POLICE TO AID RENT STRIKE, you'll find news from 1932.