housing

The myth that we’re all in this together is already wearing thin. COVID-19 has come after ten years of grinding austerity characterised by the gig economy, poverty wages, benefit cuts, attacks on the NHS, and a desperate housing crisis. While the richest 1% have got richer, we’ve had a growth in food banks, child poverty, unaffordable housing and poor health. In fact UK poverty numbers were at their highest level for 18 years even before the coronavirus. Unequal societies are prone to outbreaks of mass disease, and our society gets more unequal with every passing day. Lockdown has shown that this is a public health crisis defined by inequality, and the working class is suffering most.

This handbook was produced by the RENT STRIKE collective in April 2020 in response to the Covid-19 crisis. It is designed specifically to assist students to go on rent strike as a means to win rent suspensions or cuts in response to the financial difficulties the Covid-19 crisis has caused for tenants.

Around the world, calls are circulating for rent strikes in response to the economic hardships inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This text, which was originally produced in Spanish and adapted for an English-language audience by Crimethinc, reviews over a century of rent strikes around the world in hopes of identifying what makes them succeed or fail, in order to evaluate whether this is an opportune moment for a global rent strike.

An interview with the residents of Station 40 in San Francisco, who were among the first in the US to state their intention to go on a rent strike in response to the pandemic. This interview was first published by Crimethinc.