Building Tenant Power

The Czech tenants union fighting for rights

With rent increases vastly outstripping wages, renters across the world are organising into unions to defend their rights from profit-seeking landlords, and to fight for legal protections. Iniciativa nájemníků a nájemnic, or Tenant’s Initiative, is one such union, formed in the Czech Republic to bring social and institutional change to the post-socialist housing market. We talked to one of the founders, Yuliya Moskvina, about the housing conditions in the Czech Republic, how to organise for social power, and the hopes for building alternative structures to neoliberal capitalism.

Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your work?

My name is Yuliya and I am one of the founders of the Tenants Initiative in the Czech Republic. We started several years ago, and our goal was to stand for the rights of tenants of course, because we are tenants - it was self defence against capitalism. We started with some community organising, but that didn't work so well, so we decided to organise a larger organisation, which is a tenant’s union. We are operating in Prague, Brno and Ostrava and I mainly operate in Ostrava.

What is the state of protections for renters in the Czech Republic?

We have these two types of regimes, let's say. One is for those people who have agreements for unlimited terms - for those people the protection is quite good, it’s hard to evict them. Rent is regulated to a 20% rise over three years - which I personally think is big, I don't know how they came up with this number, since a normal wage doesn't grow 20% in three years - but this is not general practice. The other regime, the general practice now, is to have a one-year agreement and then a chaining of these one-year agreements each year. In this case I would say there is almost no protection at all, you never know if the agreement will be prolonged. The landlord can raise your rent as they wish. They say that the regulation is based on the normal price in the neighbourhood, but the problem is how they judge these prices – they are based on the prices of new flats proposed on the websites of real estate agencies, and these are quite high. There is no data on which a fair price could be based, just the data from the real estate agency, and they can raise the rent quite rapidly. My own flat used to be €500 plus services, which became €700, a €200 rise. I mean, it's not that big, but for the Czech Republic, it's a lot of money, it's almost a 50% price increase, and it's not illegal.

Would you say that the main issue that you address is the rent rises?

No, I would say the very main issue that we're addressing is the one-year agreement. Of course, the price of rent is extremely high, the housing in the Czech Republic I think is one of the most expensive in Europe. There are statistics that show that prices are growing twice as fast as wages. We address rent, but our basic idea now is to organise people and to build an organisation in which we can emancipate tenants and give them power and voice. For some tenants the one-year agreement is the reason why they choose not to join the union, because they're scared of their landlords. They think the agreement will not be extended if they criticise their landlords, which I personally consider is totally undemocratic, and a direct influence of landlordism on the right to free speech.

How do you convince someone to join a union?

People join unions because they have problems, there are a lot of people here who come to us, and we tell them that we work only with members. You have to become a member, if you want to build power with us, this is the hard point. I think in our neoliberal capitalist society, many people don't understand the idea of collective power.

These people think very often that if they can’t solve the issue with their landlord, then they will find another landlord who will be nicer - this is not true. To explain to people that their position will be like this forever because they don't own property, it's hard. It's connected to a class analysis which people don't use or think of, especially in post socialist countries. This word “class” is forbidden.

Are you making people aware of the kind of power that they have?

Not aware, because now they don't have that much power. But I would say that we try to build this power, because now we are the only tenant’s union in the Czech Republic, the first one and the only one that exists, so we need to build this power, because nobody else will.

There is an organisation in the Czech Republic called the Association for Tenants Protection, they provide legal support for tenants, but they make deals with landlords, so we are kind of allies in the sense that there is literally no other organisation that would stand for tenants’ rights, but in a political sense we are not. They're closer to a centrist perspective, and we are more on the left.

Are you working with other tenants’ organisations in other countries?

Yes, we are connected through the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing in the City, which I love so much. It's an amazing network. We don't work together with other organisations directly, but in this coalition we share a lot of experiences, a lot of tactics, different strategies that we use in our struggles, including some material strategies like databases. It's more on the basis of sharing information, we are in the process of building the network, which will be an international network.

Your manual lists different strategies like protests and petitions, but also negative campaigns to shame individual landlords, how do these function?

In comparison with Western countries, in post socialist countries, especially in the Czech Republic, the property ownership structure is very fragmented. Usually landlords have very few properties, they privatised their own flats in the 1990s, so they got their flats, but the market is very fragmented, it's very uncommon to have big landlords. There was one in Ostrava, that came to be because privatisation put 43,000 flats here into the hands of one official – they are now owned by Heimstaden (a Swedish property development corporation). But the landlords we usually deal with are not institutional, they are private, so it is more problematic to do negative campaigns. Usually it is enough for them to understand that behind their tenant there is an organisation that knows what it is doing and maybe then it's better to give this deposit back.

So in Ostrava, our strategy wasn't supposed to be a negative campaign, but we just told the stories of tenants, there are so many stories and the majority are bad, because the situation of tenants in the Czech Republic is bad. We made this into a strategy. We showed portraits mainly of older people, pensioners, and they were telling their experiences, that worked really well. Our basic demand was that we wanted to talk directly with the biggest landlord of Ostrava, so we showed the actual conditions of life under this landlord, and it worked well for us. And he was agitated of course, he called us liars, he said it wasn’t true.

Is that the typical response you get from landlords?

Oh no, we get a lot of different responses. We deal a lot with deposits, because landlords just think that the deposit is a present for them, they just don't want to give back. When we come as representatives from the union, and when the tenant is fighting back against the landlord, they get really confused, they don't know who we are, they probably think we are lawyers or social workers. Sometimes they don't want to let us inside the flat, and start shouting at us. But in general, they get intimidated by the fact that this tenant is not alone, so they cannot just do whatever they want, they usually back off.

As well as this aspect of coming face to face with the landlord, is there also a legal aspect to it, are you trying to change the laws?

Yes, there is, one of our major public demands is to ban the short-term agreement. In Czech labour law, you cannot have one-year agreements for 10 years with one employer, it's not legal. You can have two such agreements, and then the third agreement must be for an unfixed term. So we want the same for tenants, and of course the landlords resisted, they say some bullshit, they create some statistics out of nothing. This is our public demand considering the law, and now there is some negotiation with the Ministry of Regional Affairs responsible for drafting this law, and we are a part of this negotiation. But of course, a lot of landlords in the Czech Republic are very well organised at lobbying, with a lot of money and a lot of power, what they are proposing is just unacceptable. They propose, for example, the deposit, which now is a maximum of three months’ worth of rent, to be raised to six months. If you pay €5000 for the deposit, and the landlord considers it a present for themselves, that’s unacceptable.

Do you notice differences in the tenants’ behaviour before and after they joined the union?

It's a hard question, because of the many people who joined us in Prague, for example, there are some who understand ideas of collective power, so I won't say that it changed them, but the tenant’s union really gave them space for meaningful political work. This organisation is dynamic, it grows so fast, it proposes so many opportunities for activists, politicians are inviting us to discussions about laws after like half a year of our existence. It means that they recognise our power, right? I don't trust any politician, but you know, they recognise our organisation. But I think that there is still a lot of work to be done. It's very hard to work with older people, and people from the working class. Some have very naïve understandings of power, and some don't have any understanding of power.

Right now, I think there is a very pragmatic Left rising here in the Czech Republic, that deals with housing rights, and a new wave of trade union organisers is coming. To bring the ideas of organising based on economic interests back, either with the question of labour or with the question of housing is quite the challenge, but it's also a very pragmatic strategy. In a sense this is an ideology articulated in action. We now build economic infrastructure and strong organisations - without it we will really be weak, and poor.

Is there an end goal that you have envisioned with the group?

Well, for me personally, the end goal is no rent, no landlords, this would be an ideal state. Housing as a right, it can be provided universally. There is this organisation in Scotland, Living Rent, and they have these demands of universal public housing, which are astonishing. I would love these demands, but for the Czech Republic, it's too unrealistic. For us to put a ban on a one-year agreement is enough for us to be called communists. Speaking realistically, I would like to have more protection as a tenant. I would like to have long term agreements and I would like the price of rent to be dependent on the rise of actual wage. For example, in recent years in the Czech Republic, the rise of actual wage was negative, so the rent should also decrease, not increase.

I pay half of my money for rent now; in the past it was different. During the Communist era, for example, people were paying 1/10th of their income for rent, and now we're paying half. Communism was a horrible dictatorship, but in terms of housing provision, they apparently did a better job.

Do you anticipate a lot more institutional landlords owning many properties?

I'm not an expert, but I would say that logically, yes. I don't think there is a housing crisis. I think it's the normal development of capitalism in the Czech Republic. I think that it's also connected to the fact that the Czech Republic is economically semi-peripheral, really dependent on the German economy and since there is a very low added value of labour in the Czech Republic, the wages are quite low. This is one aspect and then you have another aspect, that housing became so expensive, it's not affordable for common people, only for investors. So you have, on the one hand, low wages given by the economic position of the Czech Republic, and on the other hand, the capitalist monopolisation of housing, which is not regulated by the state at all. That’s what the capitalist market does when there is no regulation, it monopolises. This is not a crisis, this is a condition of the Czech Republic that has lasted for many years, and it's not going to change without regulations. It's very hard to work with this, but we will learn. There is no other choice than to fight against this.

Is there anything you would like to say to people interested in organising?

I would like to say that one of the secrets of our organisation is that after every public meeting, we have a great party. I think that this is a very positive thing, there are even some people who just come for the party. I would recommend everybody who is doing organising to not forget that, OK, we live in capitalism, it’s hard to organise, it's a lot of effort and sometimes the results are not really obvious but throw a party! Party, dance, and spend good time with your friends, and celebrate whatever you're doing because it's important and it's enough.

Tenant’s Initiative: https://iniciativanajemniku.cz/en/domu-english/

Their manual for tenants: https://iniciativanajemniku.cz/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/PRIRUCKA_INN_EN_last_version.pdf

Images: Yuliya Moskvina, Tadeáš Polák