Decent housing is a right, not a privilege. Everyone deserves to feel at home in the place where they lay their head at night. Oxford’s renters have the power to fight the greed that forces us to scramble for the basics: a safe, affordable place for everyone to eat, rest and thrive.
We are a member-led, Oxford-based renters union that puts renters’ needs first. We are funded by and run by our members. We take decisions collectively and democratically, and everyone’s view is as important as anyone else’s. We advocate for each other, build meaningful community together, and fight against housing injustices. We are a new group, and we are constantly learning from our members’ lives and experiences. We recognize, too, that oppressive forces like racism, misogyny, transphobia and ableism shape many of our members’ housing struggles, and we are committed to resisting housing discrimination in all its forms.
The housing crisis
The national housing crisis has not spared our city of Oxford. The signs of a broken housing system are here for all to see: increasing rents, homelessness, residents being pushed further and further away from the city centre, all made worse by an acute shortage of council housing. In the meantime, it’s business as usual for the landlords, including the biggest of them all: the University of Oxford. In the face of all this, we must find strength in numbers.
Our fight
Our union aims to combat housing injustice at every level. We’re not afraid to bring the fight to the landlords who profit off our need for shelter, or to the estate agents whose business model is built on renters’ exploitation. We work both to bring justice and compensation to members’ individual cases—from getting back stolen deposits to resisting evictions—and to combat wider patterns of housing inequality across the city. At the highest level, we’re fighting to change local housing policy to make it easier for people to live well in homes they can actually afford—and harder for landlords to grind us down, shirk their duties, and evict us whenever we put up a fuss.
Our aims
General Aims
- Social housing for all who need it
- Safe, well-insulated housing for all
- Bring rent down through rent controls
Local Aims
- Stopping forced evictions
- Returning stolen deposits
- Demanding necessary repairs
Less than half of people in Oxford own their homes. Almost a third of us rent in the private sector. We are many; they are few. It’s time for us to stand up for our rights.