Urban Housing Crisis Response

This year’s International Tenants’ Day focuses on Urban Housing Crisis Response, highlighting the urgent need to tackle the severe housing challenges facing cities worldwide. Rising rents, shrinking affordability, and the growing financialisation of housing are putting pressure on tenants and undermining social cohesion. Addressing this crisis requires more than short-term fixes – it demands systemic change.

The International Union of Tenants (IUT) calls for policies that ensure adequate, affordable, and secure rental housing as a cornerstone of sustainable urban development. Our priorities include stronger tenant protections, increased investment in social and public housing, regulation of speculative real-estate markets, and climate-resilient housing policies that leave no one behind. Housing must be recognised and treated as a human right, not a commodity.

On this International Tenants’ Day, we stand together with tenants’ organisations worldwide to demand urgent responses to the housing crisis – responses that put people before profit, strengthen communities, and create inclusive, fair, and resilient cities for the future.

Statement from IUT President Marie Linder:
“Having a home is not a privilege – it is a fundamental human right. On International Tenants’ Day, we call on governments to act with urgency: protect tenants, invest in affordable homes, and ensure that cities are built for people, not for profit. Only then can we secure dignity, equality, and justice in housing for all.” 

The IUT encourages its members to observe and celebrate the international tenants day in their own capacity and supports its members in making their own choice at a national or regional level as to which sub-themes they may want to promote and which events they wish to organise.

Help us to spread the word and send pictures and descriptions of your events so we may publish them on the IUT website. Please send it to info@iut.nu.

International Tenants Day originated in 1986 when the French tenant organisation CNL proposed a special world day for tenants. The board of the IUT agreed and decided on May 22 1986, to designate the first Monday in October as International Tenants’  Day. The IUT announces a theme each year but tenant organisations are of course free to choose their own topic/theme for this day.

The date chosen by the IUT Board was made with the background of the UN resolution taken in December 1985, by the UN General Assembly, to designate the first Monday of October every year as World Habitat Day.

Event suggestions include:

• Organise a discussion or debate either physical or online on how your city or community can act and contribute to a fairer deal for Tenants
• Organise a film screening either physical or online to bring people together in a common space and promote local creativity.
• Use this occasion to publicise, reward and demonstrate tangible improvements in Tenant issues in your community.
• Engage a well-known person or local expert to support your event to bring positive attention to The International Tenants’ Day
• Organise public information campaigns, use local actors, musicians, or poets to create awareness of the issues affecting your city or community.
• Approach local media to write articles, do radio or television pieces on the themes, or organise interviews or panels with policymakers, government officials, academics, journalists, other professionals, and Tenant representatives.
• Essay writing or painting competitions can help create awareness of International Tenants’ Day in schools and colleges.
• Offer a university lecture or Master class on the theme of the International Tenants’ Day
• Organise a picture exhibition
• Launch reports and projects about the theme of the International Tenants’ Day
• Organise video interviews with Tenant champions
• Organize a donation event to assist your city or community
• Engage in a Twitter chat on the theme of International Tenants’ Day
• Promote and create a web page or a web banner on your website with information about the International Tenants’ Day
• Promote International Tenants’ Day through social media

The IUT supports its members in making their own choice at a national or regional level as to which sub-themes they may want to promote and which events they wish to organise.

Please send pictures and descriptions of your events so we can publish them on the iut. nu website. Please send it to info@iut.nu.