“The best leaders are those who are already based in their communities”

We recently interviewed Iniciativa nájemníků a nájemnic, one of the latest initiatives wee are supporting in Europe to know more about their approach to building political power for tenants in the Czech Republic, which is is quite unique.

Can you tell us about how Iniciativa nájemníků a nájemnic came to life?

It started in 2021, when a few of us, some activists and most of us tenants, were organizing people in particular housing estates in Prague. We realized that in order to tackle tenants’ precariousness (instability as a result of changing short-term contracts and unregulated rent increases) we need a greater social change that will bring decent and secure housing for those who cannot afford home ownership. That’s why the Tenants Initiative, a civic movement and the first tenants’ union in the Czech republic, was established in September 2022. We believe that we can only achieve the change we need together. We are building a membership organization that gives tenants a voice and is able to defend them against injustice.

As a union, you are trying to improve the living condition of tenants in the Czech Republic through different initiatives and from different angles. What are some of your priorities in the short term?

Our initiative priority focus is to collectively protect the rights of tenants in individual cases. Therefore we focus on organizing other tenants in the union to create a thick solidarity network. 

With a vision to make the union democratic and independent, we’ve established elected local and national committees, which coordinate decision-making, meetings and congresses. We now focus on coordination of various working groups within the union for them to be self-reliant.The working groups (sometimes formed on local, time-based or other bases) focus on various activities such as public education, membership education and care, media and communication, strategy planning, etc. Some of our short-term priorities: 

• public: a small-scale online campaign for membership recruitment and at the same time drawing attention to the postponed legislative change to the Civil Code regulating the tenancy relationship; media output to to change the perception of tenants in Czech society towards recognition of a tenant union as an autonomous political actor
• internal: securing the membership structure in newly established branches in cities of Olomouc, Czech Budwaiser and Liberec; 
• local-based: organizing entire buildings against management sub-renting companies (Prague); organizing against and negotiating with Heimstaden corporate (Moravia-Silesia region)

With the vision of long-term goals for a systemic change (the end of short-term contracts chaining, rent-increase regulation, etc..), the independent union structure will allow us, as organizers, to educate tenants leaders and leaders from local communities to advocate for the social change.

And what are some of your accomplishments so far?

By the end of 2024, after 2 years of its existence, we have 300+ members across the Czech Republic. We have democratic bodies in the cities of Prague, Brno and Ostrava and we’ve just elected the second round of representatives of these Local Councils and new representatives of the Republic Council for the upcoming year.  Also, there are new local branches in Czech Budweiser and Olomouc and plans to form a new one in Liberec.

During the last year, the union’s solidarity and action group has helped in 20 cases of tenants facing injustice of landlords’ illegal detention of their deposits; it organized a building with 200 tenant flats to successfully collectively negotiate a rent decrease during the renovation of the building in spring 2023. Besides the material gains, these successes empower our members and have a mobilizing effect – they are followed by an influx of new members. Also, participating in such activities brings the improvement of negotiating skills, enhanced confidence in engaging with landlords and stakeholders and increased knowledge and capacity for effective advocacy.

At some point, you realized that to change the reality of tenants it wasn’t enough to influence the political system, you had to be part of political institutions and train powerful tenant leaders who could win elections and reform the system from within. How did you come to this conclusion?

We came to this conclusion because of our experience with lobbying. There is no political party that we could lobby – none of our current political parties in government is seriously interested in housing. The current Czech government is right-wing, formed by a neoliberal coallition. To be successful as a movement we have to open so-called windows of political opportunities. Opening windows of political opportunities means that we create a possibility of response from institutional actors who can actually do necessary legislative changes. This could be done only by entering politics — without any people who support us in the institutional politics (which is a current situation) our efforts go in vain.

How do you identify potential political leaders within your network? Is there any formula or methodology you have seen working well?

The best leaders are those who are already based in their communities – they have some support from the people already. Organic leaders are identified based on how many people they can bring to the meeting. They are usually well embedded in their communities, they already have trust and support. They know the needs of people the most – therefore, they can relate to the real and actual problems of people in their political campaigns. And our goal and strategy is to develop the leadership capacities of these people. 

And, finally, what are you planning to use Multitude’s support for?

Primarily for the personal costs of our core team organizers. Apart from that for rental costs for organizing public events or other costs related to organizing educational and public events.