This is the launch event for the tenants’ union Living Rent’s manifesto for the Holyrood elections 2021. Scotland needs a major shift in its housing. At this event we will launch our manifesto to set out how.

The pandemic has not brought new issues to the front but has rather acted as a stress test, revealing pre-existing fractures. From putting their lives at risk as essential workers to facing financial collapse, working-class people are set to absorb the impact of economic disaster for the second time in a generation. The Holyrood elections in 2021 are a vital opportunity to rebuild for Scotland a fair, just, affordable housing system for all tenants.

ZOOM LINK AVAILABLE HERE: https://zoom.us/j/4269724250

Landlords in private and social housing are pressuring tenants to move out, legally and illegally. 

The Scottish Government has said no-one should lose their homes due to the impact of Coronavirus. Living Rent says no lock outs during or after lockdown. 

In this training, you will learn:

• About the eviction process from an early threat to a physical eviction 
• How to practically plan for and resist an eviction, using direct collective action

Come to the meeting 5 minutes early, so we can start sharp!

This training is part of Living Rent’s training program supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation, you can see the next training sessions on the website.

Member by member Living Rent is growing stronger. If you have recently joined, looking to get more involved or want to understand the unions history, vision and structure better, come along to the member induction at 11am, sharp.

Induction covers:
-  An introduction to Living Rent
- The structure: branches, teams and roles
- Getting involved and next steps

Housing in Scotland has experienced thirty years of rapid change. 

The communities where Living Rent organises have been impacted by political decisions aimed at promoting home ownership and destroying public housing on a massive scale. 

This session will look at the key moments in that transformation: social housing construction, rent decontrol, the introduction of right to buy, stock transfer, and the rise of the private rented sector. 

As a union, our vision of safe, secure, affordable housing for all is a direct challenge to the housing system that has emerged from these moments. By understanding the forces shaping Scotland’s housing landscape, we can start to build effective campaigns able to change policy at a national level.

Come to the meeting a few minutes early, so we can start sharp!

This training is part of Living Rent’s training program supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation, you can see the next training sessions on the website.

As a union, one of our core goals is to develop strategic, targeted and feasible campaign plans. 

This training session will first cover how to develop effective demands, or ‘issues’, thinking through the range of ways one can solve the problems that members confront and how to prioritise these solutions over time. 

A second training (Saturday 7 November, 11-12.30pm) will explore how to strategise around planning a campaign to win the selected demands, with a particular focus on ‘power-mapping’, that is mapping the different allies you can seek to strengthen your campaigns as well as understanding your target. 

This training aims to provide an introduction to effective campaigning for all members of the union and anyone else interested in campaigning for their rights.

In this first training, you will practice:

•   Brainstorming the multiple causes and solutions to a problem
•   ‘Cutting the issue’

In the second training, you will practice:

•   Planning a strategy
•   Power mapping
•   Analysing the interests, leverage and identity of your target

Thorough planning and strategising is the first step in running effective campaigns and it takes practice, more practice and more practice. It takes tools and ‘software’ to ask the right questions and make informed decisions, and these two sessions will introduce such tools for you to bring to any of the next campaigns that you will take on in Living Rent!

Come to the meeting a few minutes early, so we can start sharp!

This training is part of Living Rent’s training program supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation, you can see the next training sessions on the website.

Learn how to write effective and snappy facebook posts, newsletter paragraphes or website posts. 

In addition, there will be a break out room focussed on writing minutes and clarifying action points and making sure that minutes are effective and clear. This training will be great for current/ future secretaries and communications officers of Living Rent to hone their skills, as well as to all members, interested in improving their writing skills.

In this training, you will practise:

•   Writing a facebook post, newsletter paraphrasing and website article
•   Taking minutes for a meeting
•   Thinking through how to  make your text engaging, clear and accessible

Putting forward Living Rent’s values, vision and stories is crucial to us effectively celebrating our victories and keeping each other informed and the work going on in the union. Whilst it might feel daunting at first to ‘write for the union’ as everything, it comes with practice, and this is the moment to do so together!

Come to the meeting a few minutes early, so we can start sharp!

This training is part of Living Rent’s training program supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation, you can see the next training sessions on the website.

As a union, one of our core goals is to develop strategic, targeted and feasible campaign plans. 

This training will explore how to strategise around planning a campaign to win the selected demands, with a particular focus on ‘power-mapping’, that is mapping the different allies you can seek to strengthen your campaigns as well as understanding your target. 

This training aims to provide an introduction to effective campaigning for all members of the union and anyone else interested in campaigning for their rights.

In this training, you will practise

•   Planning a strategy
•   Power mapping
•   Analysing the interests, leverage and identity of your target

Thorough planning and strategising is the first step in running effective campaigns and it takes practice, more practice and more practice. It takes tools and ‘software’ to ask the right questions and make informed decisions, and these two sessions will introduce such tools for you to bring to any of the next campaigns that you will take on in Living Rent!

Come to the meeting a few minutes early, so we can start sharp!

This training is part of Living Rent’s training program supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation, you can see the next training sessions on the website.

Within Living Rent, we believe that often direct action is the best way to get our targets to sit down and negotiate with us the demands that we put forward. 

Come to this training to practice how to plan a direct action for it to be fun, creative, tactical and empowering. This training aims to provide an introduction to planning a non-violent direct action for all members of the union and anyone else interested in seeing how to use this tactic to protect and further their rights.

In this training, you will

•   Understand why Living Rent uses non-violent direct actions and towards which goals
•   Brainstorming different ways to build the ‘symbolic’ narrative for a direct action
•   Evaluate which direct action is most relevant to achieve your goals
•   Go through check-lists to effectively plan an action

Direct action is what gets the goods. Come here to see how to put that in practice for member defence or branch campaigns and leave feeling excited for planning more and more direct actions to protect members’ rights and achieve our demands!

Come to the meeting a few minutes early, so we can start sharp!

This training is part of Living Rent’s training program supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation, you can see the next training sessions on the website.

Registered social landlords are unrepentantly pursuing tenants for rent, refusing to carry out repairs and raising the rent year after year. 

In this training, you will learn: 

• To work through 3 common issues that tenants in social and public housing face
• How to fight back and win improvements to your and your neighbours' housing

Come to the meeting a few minutes early, so we can start sharp!

This training is part of Living Rent’s training program supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation, you can see the next training sessions on the website.

When the history of the left can feel like an uphill battle with not enough victories, it’s crucial that we all learn to celebrate successes! 

And one of the most effective ways to do this is to ‘story-tell’ our victories, showing that we can and do win! 

Come to this training to practise how to clearly recount victories of your union and hear from various victories across the union! This training aims to provide an introduction to storytelling and to the victories that Living Rent members have achieved just last year, for all members of the union and anyone else interested in seeing how to use storytelling to support their organising.

In this training, you will

•   Understand when and why to use storytelling and the basic ‘storytelling’ structure
•   Practise storytelling based on Living Rent’s member defence, campaigns and branch victories
•   Hear from different members of the union about the victories that we have bagged this year!

Come to practie storytelling to celebrate union victories, encourage and empower other members and recognise that whilst the battles are hard, we are also able to win them and need to be good at winning and at celebrating those wins! 

Come to the meeting a few minutes early, so we can start sharp!

This training is part of Living Rent’s training program supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation, you can see the next training sessions on the website.