Organizing the Danish tenants

An overall description

Headlines

1. A brief history

2. Organizing in the two main sectors

3. Lack of sufficient unity

4. Tenant-unions outside the big cities

5. Strong in handling housing politics, but

otherwise a very week national secretariat

6. Housing politics in the light of our lack of

sufficient national strength

7. Uniting the local unions in regions with

sufficient means to develop better

membership services

8. Supporting local unions and activists

A brief historyPoverty during the first World War

- A national tenant union (not socialist)- Rent regulation – rent control boards- Tenant protection against evictions

The thirties – unemployment – new policies

- Two tenant unions

Towards free marked thinking (1966)

- Uniting in Lejernes Landsorganisation (LLO)

The seventies – the new left – up and downs for tenant rights

- Rent rise are linked to the cost of management (1974)- Tenant democracy and housing associations (1977)- Stopping the sellout of the rented housing to owner-occupied flats (1979)- Growing home ownership and increasing exclusion of tenants from mainstream society

The two main sectorsThe rented housing owned by private landlords

• The main work field for LLO• Tenant participation boards• Rent control boards• Most issues depends on laws and the ruling in court• Negotiation rights and our ability to participate in these are to weak

The housing associations

• Tenant boards on estate level – to much controlled by the management• The national organization for housing association clams and manage to

some extend to be an organization for tenant in housing organizations – but just to some extend.

• Inside LLO we’re often underestimating the consequences of this problem. It’s cutting a lot of potential members of for us.

Lack of sufficient unity

Lejernes Landsorganisation (LLO) – 50.000

More than half in Copenhagen

Danmarks Lejerforeninger – 5.000

5 – 7 local unions joined together

Other local unions – 10.000

Odense – the town of Hans Christian AndersenAarhus – the capital of Jutland (4000)

The tenants in housing associations estates

Free legal aid institutions

Outside the big citiesThe typical situation

Great enthusiasm in the beginning

Stability without growth later on

An union with 100 – 600 members

In the stronger local unions it might be equal to 10 - 20 % of the tenants in town. Otherwise lower

No employed staff

Necessary for further growth

Unpaid activist get burned out

The activist are important in connection to our strength toward getting the tenant issues across on local and on national level, and as board members in our organization on all levels – but they are often instead only working with a great workload of cases.

The national secretariatKlaus Hansen – our national chairman

Jesper Larsen – scholar in economics

One secretary/accountant

Good at influencing housing policies

No one skilled at taking care of building up the organizational work

No one skilled at taking care of building up the service-oriented part

Housing politics and strength• The rent level are rising by loopholes introduced in the legislation throughout the last 10

– 20 years.

• The supply of affordable housing in Copenhagen and other big towns big decreasing while the need is increasing.

• Even in the social democratic party you’ll find politicians joining liberal thought of letting the cost based rent setting system introduced back in the seventies fall and replaced with free marked rent.

• The fight for preserving rent control can’t be won without a strong and quite better organized tenant organization, that’s reaching into the field of housing politics throughout the country. We have to be more visible.

• And we have to be able to manage new solutions – if part of the old rent control system are going to fall – it’ll be of vital importance for us to be able to participate in solutions where there still will be some protection against rent increase.

• One solution could be a kind of negotiated rent system. Our own weakness as an organization might be the most important barrier to cope with if that came to be the solution.

Uniting the unions in regions

From voluntary to professional

To secure membership service

• A necessary change filled with barriers and problems

• You need the activists, and you even need more of them, and you need them to know about the real problems – not just to be filling in boards without knowledge

• You have to be professional in handling the introduction of employees in a culture that not used to cope with it.

• Like this one: It’s quit easy to get people on the staff – but it’s not easy to do it without other people thinking they ought to be the ones employed.

Not drowning in the process

An regional office in Jutland - 146 new cases this year

AH *

JA *

AJ

HV

KG

LDO #LFR #

CJU #

MKR #

MLY #

Mine

GrenaaHerning

Silkeborg

Thisted

Viborg

Skive

Voluntary work Employed staff(and voluntary work)

We’ll “kill the change agent”It is tough to be the ”change agent”

• Everybody just knows have the others ought to do it to do it right

• If you talking about changing your own way of doing it – it’s much more tough

• It’s often easier to fight on the inside, than gaining on the outside – like to fight about money we have rather than fighting for new money/more member

• Frustrations often hurts the change agent – not the backbenchers

• Tell it, and tell it again – and always know, that everybody wants to do the right thing – they just still aren’t thinking the same way, cause it takes time, management and a lot more to make organizations work forward together without killing it along the way

20022000 €

20035000 €

200415.000 €