Neighbourhoods against global corporate landlords

This commentary explores the renewed significance of the neighbourhood scale in tenant organising amid the rise of global corporate landlords. Historically, tenant unions have been embedded in neighbourhood spaces and relations in various ways. Today, neighbourhoods serve as vital sites of resistance, offering rootedness against increasing displacement pressures and providing organising spaces for dwellers of dispersed property portfolios. However, neighbourhood-based organising continues to face political ambiguities and structural limitations, raising strategic questions about how local struggles connect to broader tenant movements. This discussion is grounded in the experience of Barcelona’s neighbourhood housing unions, examining their evolving repertoires of contention and organisation – including anti-eviction blockades, the formation of neighbourhood-based ‘communities of struggle’, and practices of coordination and confederation.