This article is a comparative study of the two largest individual tenant associations in Sweden during the mid-war period. Stockholms Hyresgästförening largely resembled a political association. Combining political lobbying with housing co-operative projects, the organization tried to reform the institutional foundation of the Swedish housing market. Hyresgästernas Centralförsamling i Göteborg had a more trade union-like organizational structure, frequently employing rent strikes and blockades against the organised landlords. The merging of these two organizations within the national federation Hyresgästernas Riksförbund was not conflict-free. After the purging of radicals within the tenants’ movement and after regulated rents where imposed in legislation 1942, the tenants’ movement abandoned militancy and Hyresgästernas Riksförbund became an increasingly centralised and eventually influential actor in the Swedish corporative system that was to emerge after the Second World War.