United Kingdom

Union. It's just the one as far as I know, Hyresgästföreningen, though it exists nationwide.

Government housing in this case are smaller companies owned by individual municipalities, rather than the state. My previous town Nyköping had a landlord run by the municipality called Nyköpingshem. These companies don't necessarily exist to make a profit, though if they do profit the profits get reinvested generally into the housing, or into the municipality itself. They also sometimes get cash injections from the municipality for specific purposes, e.g. new developments. I think the queue time for a three roomer from Nyköpingshem was like 5-8 years. The government (state) isn't doing a whole lot to fix the housing crisis, I feel.

So the tenants union serve to negotiate rents with the landlord unions (Fastighetsägarna), with a third party acting as a mediator. Generally rent increases have been done once per year, this year landlords got greedy and tried a second raise (they aimed for 15% first time, and 12% second time). It's not really something that's been done before so the union is afraid it'll set a new precedent.

See, landlords are actually free to set whatever rent they please, and increase it however they please, but the tenant union can push against this, and if its found that rents have been egregiously high, or the landlords haven't delivered as they should, they'll need to pay the tenants back.

And so we usually stick to the once-per-year process. Negotiations for next year should start soon, and will generally be finished sometime in the first quarter. This year because of the recession and such, some negotiations really dragged on. My old landlord didn't finalise their BS until June or so. Then they asked for the rent retroactively. Twerps.

Some landlords have raised a second time already this year. I'm not sure if there's an official ruling yet, but I read something about at least some of them being forced to pay back their tenants.

Hyresgästföreningen has their own publication, focused specifically on everything around renting.

Oh yeah, there's no requirement to be a member in Hyresgästföreningen. They negotiate the nationwide rents regardless, so you benefit even if you're not a member. Though you can generally negotiate individually with your landlord if you so please.