For 100 years, the tenants’ movement, International Union of Tenants (IUT) has defended a fundamental idea that housing is not a commodity like any other.
What is interesting is that two forces that are often presented separately can, in reality, only evolve together. On one side, the representation and protection of tenants and workers. On the other, the capacity to provide concrete truly affordable housing solutions at scale. The history of social housing shows that progress happens when both dimensions reinforce each other.
Few actors have been as consistently aligned with tenants’ interests as social and public housing providers. Not because there were never tensions, but because over decades they built something more valuable called structured cooperation, continuous dialogue, and the ability to improve systems through negotiation rather than confrontation alone. Both sides want to listen to each other, and this is not a given in housing provision.
As our President Marco Corradi said during the celebration of IUT in Sweden, “For one hundred years, our idea of housing – yours as a union, ours as a social housing system – has been rooted in people’s real needs. Needs that evolve over time. Today, we are called to profoundly redefine this idea, as we face a historical turning point comparable in scale and complexity to the major transformations of the past.”