In 2019 we organized a conference casting light on the housing crisis and especially on the historical and contemporary organization of tenants to contest housing inequalities. By placing housing struggles and tenants’ organization at the centre of the debate we aimed at exposing and politicizing current capitalist development and, hopefully, at proposing a different view of how housing can be organized and imagined by discussing how resistance can be used, with what effects and how it can be connected to other struggles. This special issue is a result of this conference dealing with tenants’ organization in different contexts examining how tenants organize(d), why and what could be learned from it. In this introducing text we give an overview of this field of research by asking why tenants’ mobilizations are important to study, what is still under-studied in the field and which perspectives are important to raise in future research.

The Swedish Union of Tenants is known today as perhaps the strongest tenants’ organisation in the world, with an established institutional role in the rent-setting system and a mandate to collectively bargain rents. What is relatively unknown, however, is that this system emerged out of a period of widespread rent struggle during the mid-war period. This was especially noteworthy in the city of Gothenburg. During the 19th Century, Gothenburg had become an important industrial centre and its population multiplied tenfold. Together with other groups, such as clerks and small shop owners, the workers formed a distinct popular class culture with organisational expressions and collective mobilisation that changed the social and political order of the city forever. One of these expressions was the tenants’ unions, seen as a sort of trade unions for the rented home. Tenants’ unions advocated protective legislation for tenants and confronted landlords, both with legal means and with militant methods such as rent strikes and blockades. This militancy reached its highest levels from 1932 to 1937. The collective mobilisation and organisation of the tenants altered the power relations between landlords and tenants, which can be seen both in the concessions made by landlords in numerous conflicts and in the fact that the landlords altered their organisations to defend themselves against the tenant offensive. By the time of the rent control act of 1942, centralised collective bargaining had been largely implemented and the collective organisations had become established and recognised interest organisations. The historical relationship between organised labour and tenants, and the effect of tenant organising on the rental market, are still under-researched subjects. This article is intended to both explore the historic rise of the tenants’ movement and to show the very real historical conflict between independent grassroot organisations and political parties in housing and labour history.

Efter den kollektiva organiseringens genombrott på arbetsmark­naden runt förra sekelskiftet började sådan organisering att bli en viktig faktor även på hyresmarknaderna i vissa industristäder: hyresgäst­föreningarna växte fram. Vad som lätt kommer i skymundan i dag är att dessa föreningar en gång i tiden satte en rad skilda kamp­metoder i bruk i sin strävan att flytta fram sina positioner. Hannes Rolf har gått till arkiven.

This thesis is a study of the collective mobilisation and organisation of tenants in Gothenburg and Stockholm between 1875 and 1942. Of special interest are the power relations and the power struggle between the landlords and the organised tenants in the same period. The similarities and differences between the tenants’ movement in Gothenburg and Stockholm played an important role in the historical process and both cities thus need to be studied and compared to each other. The concept of contentious repertoire, developed mainly in the works of Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, is used to explain the methods employed by the tenants in their collective mobilisation. Other important factors considered in the thesis are the opportunity structures available and the periods of international radicalisation where the rent struggle also seems to have intensified worldwide. Both the Swedish organised landlords and tenants modelled their organisations after labour market organisation and both parties came to understand their relation as part of a class struggle. A concept borrowed from Klas Åmark, exchangeability, will be used to illustrate an important factor – the harder it was for a landlord to replace a tenant with another tenant, the better the tenants’ position. The tenants’ unions knew this and tried with militant means as well as with advocacy for tenants’ rights and increased housing construction to make it harder for the landlords to replace their tenants. Episodes of tenant militancy were frequent, in Gothenburg especially between 1923 and 1937 and in Stockholm especially between 1928 and 1936. The collective mobilisation and organisation of the tenants did alter the power relations between landlords and tenants, which can be seen both in the concessions made by landlords in numerous conflicts and in the fact that the landlords altered their organisations to defend themselves against the tenant offensive. By the end of the period, centralised collective bargaining had been largely implemented. Other strategies aimed at reducing the exchangeability were also used by the tenants. Tenant housing cooperative enterprises, first seen as a form of protest action and as an alternative to privately owned housing, eventually took on more centralised form in the organisation HSB. The close ties between HSB and the tenants’ unions gave the latter some economical backing and the former some additional legitimacy. By the end of the research period, the idea of large-scale municipal housing had taken over the role the idea of cooperative housing once had, and even though HSB was to play an important part in the post-war housing projects it would be reduced to a secondary position. When it comes to new legislation, the rent law of 1939 did little to alter the power relations,even though it did recognise the tenants’ movement as the natural representative for the tenants’ cause. The 1942 rent act, however, did give the tenants some leverage but it also overrode the system of collective bargaining that had been worked out by the tenants and landlords. All in all, the directactions, the housing production and the new legislation reduced the exchangeability of the tenants and altered the power relations in favour of the tenants.

I dag riskerar hyresgäster att bli renovräkta när hyror chockhöjs efter renoveringar.

Hannes Rolf analyserar hur vi hamnade där, hur vi bygger en rörelse som på riktigt kan förändra och vilka lärdomar vi kan dra från den stridbara hyresgäströrelse som fanns på 1930-talet.

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.

Historien om den svenska bostadspolitiken under 1900-talet skrivs oftasom en historia där bostadspolitiken kommit ovanifrån, men vad som glöms bort är att ett starkt tryck underifrån i hög grad spelade in. Inte minst den alls inte konflikträdda hyresgäströrelse som under mellankrigstiden växte fram i Sverige spelade en viktig roll, både politiskt och mer direkt. Hyresstrejker och andra militanta metoder användes här i en inte ringa omfattning, något som i principär bortglömt i dag men som förtjänar att lyftas fram.

Den historiska bilden av arbetarrörelsen har länge varit en bild där framför allt rörelsens politiska och fackliga organisationer har lyfts fram. Utöver detta har andra delar, såsom folkbildningen, med rätta tillskrivits en viktig betydelse för arbetarrörelsens utveckling. Ett exempel på en del av rörelsen som har fått relativt lite uppmärksamhet är hyresgäströrelsen. Att hyresgästernas organisationer har uppmärksammats så pass lite som har varit fallet är intressant. Detta gäller inte minst då den svenska hyresgäströrelsen sedan andra halvan av 1900-talet, internationellt sett har varit anmärkningsvärt stark och inflytelserik och haft en mycket hög anslutningsgrad. Det unika svenska systemet med kollektivförhandlade hyror är bara ett uttryck för rörelsens historiska styrka. Denna styrka var dock inte given utan fick i mångt och mycket erövras i konfrontation med motparten, fastighetsägarna. I denna text undersöks kortfattat några av formerna som dessa konfrontationer tog.

The port city of Gothenburg, Sweden, experienced massive social changes during the 19th century. Gothenburg became an important industrial center and the population multiplied tenfold. The urbanization process led to friction as the amount of factory workers rapidly increased. Together with other groups, such as clerks and small shop-owners, the workers formed a distinct popular class culture with organizational expressions and collective mobilization that changed the social and political order of the city forever. One of these expressions was the tenants´ associations, local organizations that were formed to further the tenants claims against their landlords and to advocate political reforms benefitting for the benefit of the tenants. These organizations, seen as a sort of trade unions for the rented home, rapidly grew in the mid-war period. Tenants´ associations advocated protective legislature for tenants and confronted landlords, both with legal mains and with militant methods such as rent strikes and blockades. The associations were also important in the social life of the working-class communities, organizing studies, social events and summer activities for children. This paper examines the role of the tenants´ association in the everyday life of the Gothenburg neighborhoods and especially the role of the associations in bringing different groups of workers, such as port and factory workers, together. By looking at the tenant movement of Gothenburg and comparing it to similar movements in other cities, such as Glasgow, I hope to show how the geographical and social context in the rapidly changing city of Gothenburg produced organizations that both showed remarkable similarities and notable differences to collective action organizations elsewhere.