Tenant organizing is often framed as a reactive force, sparked by crisis, but organizers also argue that the real strength of the housing justice movement lies in their proactive, long-term approach. Organizing can build durable networks that can respond to immediate threats like evictions or rent increases while, at the same time, pushing for broader systemic change.
One of the challenges in the fight for housing justice is aligning the decentralized, dynamic energy of tenants organizing with the policy strategies of institutional actors. While tenant unions and grassroots organizations often respond to crises such as evictions, rent hikes, and landlord intimidation, other tenant-related organizations like legal clinics, academic institutions, and other adjacent non-profit groups tend to work with longer timelines, formal processes, and policy interventions. These rhythms don’t always align, but when they do, the results can be transformative.
Strategic Gaps
In Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, for example, tenant-led rent strikes in 2017 catalyzed a level of institutional support that went beyond reactive legal aid. Advocates from legal clinics and housing-focused non-profits began to adjust their frameworks to support collective, long-term tenant organizing strategies. In Fall 2023, with members of the Parkdale Organize collective and local support workers, collaboration of this nature led to a unique hybrid model where community-based organizing informed legal strategy, and vice versa. This effort helped to deliver temporary relief in the short-term as well as develop ongoing tenant power structure that have reshaped the neighbourhood’s housing dynamics for the longer-term.
Tenant organizers and policy staff at housing advocacy organizations such as the York South-Weston Tenant union suggest that many see a need for better coordination between groups that react to crises in the short-term and organizations that build longer-term policy change. Many activists will note the absence of shared tools, meeting spaces, or common planning frameworks between tenants and institutional actors as a key barrier to deeper collaboration. Some also highlighted a lack of mutual understanding between actors. Organizers often feel disconnected from policy timelines and language, while institutional staff can underestimate the time, labour, and risk involved in building tenant power from the ground up.
If these two spheres are to collaborate meaningfully, a shift in organizational infrastructure is needed. This does not require flattening grassroots politics into a more “palatable” form for policy circles, but should mean consultation, co-creation, and partnership to bring these two sides closer together. Shifts such as shared leadership models between organizations, embedded organizer-in-residence programs within institutions, and joint strategic planning processes could begin to close the distance between movements and institutional mechanisms.
Another insight of the survey was the potential for tenant unions to act as both base-building and policy-shaping organizations. In Hamilton’s East End, for example, the Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network (HTSN) has engaged in campaigns that stop evictions while feeding into municipal lobbying efforts around rent control and vacant home taxes. HTSN organizers noted that having access to a city council liaison, someone who could relay tenant priorities while understanding the nuances of policymaking, was instrumental in translating tenant mobilization into political outcomes.
To move from ad-hoc collaboration to sustained partnerships, we also need to invest in training across organizing and policy worlds. Organizers can benefit from knowledge of the policy process; policy professionals gain insight into the strategies required to implement their proposals when they understand how to canvas, knock doors, and build trust in communities under pressure. This dual fluency can help to improve campaign outcomes and build a common language that helps avoid misalignment and burnout.
Ultimately, we need to stop asking whether tenant organizing or institutional policy advocacy is more “effective” than the other, but rather, how can we equip both with the tools, knowledge, and trust to work together. The housing crisis in Canada is too large, entrenched, and politically complex to solve with siloed strategies.
Toward a Shared Strategy
We are at a crossroads. On one side, the housing system continues to push working people to the margins economically, geographically, and politically. On the other side, a growing movement of renters refuses to accept displacement. Tenant organizing is not simply about defending one’s home—it’s about building collective power, telling new stories about community, and reshaping the political imagination around what housing could be.
Institutions have a role to play in this shift, but only if they are willing to meet tenant movements on their own terms and help build the scaffolding for deeper, more resilient alliances. The bridge is already under construction in places like Toronto, Hamilton, and Montreal. Our task now is to invest in its completion, to make it sturdy enough to carry the weight of a movement that refuses to settle for survival and insists on dignity, justice, and belonging for all instead.
