In London we are wittnessing the cusp of a housing revolution; by organising a rent strike, students at University College London have forced their landlords to cut the rent and make students’ homes less extortionate. There is now a clear vision to scale-up this action to solve the exploitative rents that are sucking the life out of communities across the UK and Europe.

This is a movement that is changing the balance of power in housing politics. With your help it could be accomplished.

There are many ways that anybody and any organisation or network can support this, from pledges to promote and share future actions to donating funds. Right now we are gathering commitments of support from others who agree with this project for lower rent and want to see our campaign help turn the tide of the “housing crisis” into a crisis for the landlords.

Direct democracy and housing for the people

Most significantly, the rent strike this year, which was recognised as a game-changer by both activists and columnists in national newspapers, cost only a few thousand pounds to organise.

Now, there is real prospect for democratic change at the grassroots of British society; we have won once, and now we are determined to win again – London, and Europe, desperately needs a housing movement that can go on the offensive for decent, affordable homes.

This year, our campaign started out with a handful of volunteers and ended with hundreds of students on strike supported by a skilled network of organisers.
A year ago the movement for housing in the UK was staggering, now we have seen that victories are possible and student campaigns inspired by our strike are being established at campuses across the country.

We intend to carry on the campaign, to keep the landlords and the government on the back-foot, and this time we can coordinate with allied campaigns all over the UK. This could herald a surge for truly powerful political action based on the principles of solidarity, direct democracy and housing for the people by the people.

What do we need?

With as little as €6,000 we can run the campaign for another year with even more momentum and involving thousands of people; we will be able to lay unshakable foundations for fresh victories and affordable homes.

Imagine how easily this could be replicated en masse on a local bases around the UK and beyond!

€6,000 will cover all the basic campaign expenses needed to organise one campus, from printing flyers to throwing community assemblies. Anything raised above this mark will be able to cover solidarity funds for travelling to other campuses and cities to share the skills and inspiration to replicate our success.

Together we can win! Thank you!

The majority of the resources needed for this sort of campaign goes into printing promotional materials to help spread the message of the campaign and information of its tactics to students and supporters.

Therefore slightly more than half of the funds raised will help pay for printing to help communicate the campaign's ideas and actions.

At the same time, to mobilise we need to cover our expenses in transport, facilitating meetings and materials for demonstrations and actions. With expenses covered on these posts, we will be able to focus almost entirely on mobilising, organising, coordinating actions and taking down the landlords.

Below you can see an overview over our expenses. Whether the costs will be high or low, depends on this campaign. We can do little with a little and a lot with a lot: