Many of the successful organizing efforts in the VTU (such as the Park Beach Tenants Collective) come from large building fights focused on a single landlord. If you’re having issues in your building, and you knock on your neighbours doors and discover that 40, 50, or more people have the same issue with the same landlord, that’s a lot of tenant power you can build through organizing. But - like Abby - a significant number of tenants live in detached “single-family” housing, frequently divided up with flimsy barriers to fit as many units as possible.
How can these tenants protect themselves, and how can the VTU help?
This question has no easy answer, but it’s worth thinking about. We’ve asked other tenants unions in North America through our contacts at ATUN how they’ve done it, and even spoke to tenants unions in London and Madrid, and we’re beginning to think of an approach for what organizing tenants in detached housing might look like in Vancouver.
Beyond the building, how can we organize a whole neighbourhood of detached houses? Large swathes of the East, South and West side are filled with detached homes. These are vast areas where tenants face individual landlords, but share the same problems. So, instead of organizing around a single eviction, what if we organized around the common struggle? Uniting people in a neighbourhood through “know your rights” or “stop for-profit evictions” campaigns may be more successful in uniting tenants in detached houses, encouraging them to take on their landlords with the knowledge they have the support of their neighbours.
We’re still in the early stages, but it’s important that we as a union begin strategizing around detached housing if we’re going to fight for all tenants in Vancouver.
The first and most important step is one you can take right now: Talk to your neighbours. If you don't know the other tenants in your home or on your block, try introducing yourself! If you have access to a backyard, why not consider having a BBQ as the weather gets warmer? Building relationships with your housemates and making sure you all know your rights as tenants can be essential to successfully confronting your landlord and winning.
If you'd like to be a part of this conversation, get involved in your local chapter, or consider getting involved with some of our neighbourhood-based campaigns (such as Abby's eviction defense in the Kensington neighbourhod).
(Originally published in the March 2025 VTU Newsletter)