It is February 29, 2024, when I first ring the doorbell of Albert Martens’ home in Schaerbeek, Brussels. The 84-year-old housing activist and sociologist invites me into his attic office, in the house he has lived in since being displaced in 1974. When I ask him about the history of the neighborhood in the late ’60s, he begins to share a long story, pulling books from his library and unrolling maps. Over the following months, we meet several more times as I realize his recollections sound strangely similar to the current efforts of our newly-founded community union [1] in the same neighborhood, exactly 50 years later.
In my capacity both as a researcher and housing activist, I have often contemplated how insights from past collective resistance movements could inform and contribute to current efforts aimed at achieving housing justice. As Tubridy (2024) asserts, radical history can play a role in overcoming a pervasive sense of powerlessness in today’s housing-justice efforts by demonstrating how change has been achieved historically, and emphasizing the transformative potential of collective action. However, historical housing and community struggles tend to be poorly documented and quickly forgotten. Retrieving written and oral community archives can counter this lack of collective social movement memory, allowing past stories to inspire contemporary struggles and organizing efforts.
The focus on reactivating community archives to support present-day justice efforts aligns with the wider “archival turn” of the 1990s. This movement critically interrogates the presumed authority of mainstream institutional archives and questions the emphasis on archival preservation. In academic contexts, engaging with archives of community resistance contributes to debates within critical geography on bridging the academic–activist divide. Academic work is often synonymous with individualized, depoliticized work, with little recognition or reward for engaged research which directly collaborates with local communities or aims to produce politically actionable knowledge. In response, as Graziani and Shi (2020) highlight, activist scholarship poses the critical question, “Whom does our work serve?”, emphasizing data collection aimed at advancing justice rather than solely serving academic interests. Academic engagement with archival work, when developed in collaboration with the communities involved, can offer a valuable contribution to activist efforts by providing a historically informed perspective on organizing efforts.
From destruction to community organizing: the origins of Brussels’ first renters’ union
Between 1968 and 1974, the mass-scale destruction of Brussels’ Northern Quarter (Quartier Nord in French; Noordwijk in Dutch), a working-class neighborhood bordering Brussels-North railway station, resulted in the forced eviction of more than 11,000 residents. As part of a larger phenomenon known as Brusselization, characterized by urban-planning anarchy and careless destruction, the extensive demolitions were to make way for the “Manhattan Project,” an ambitious renewal-through-bulldozer initiative that envisioned a business district featuring 80 skyscrapers and an extensive highway network at the crossroads of Paris, Amsterdam, London, and Istanbul.
Recognizing the vast scale of displacement and the inadequacy of individual support, the local church of Saint-Roch, located in the heart of the targeted area, initiated the first attempts at organizing the renters in the neighborhood. Although the organizing efforts came too late, and only 15% of the local population was rehoused, the shockwaves from the Northern Quarter’s destruction, encapsulated in the slogan “Plus jamais de Quartier Nord” (“Northern Quarter, never again”), inspired the emergence of urban struggles throughout the city.
Video footage captured by the author in March 2024.
In the aftermath of the demolition of the Northern Quarter, Brussels saw the establishment of its very first renters’ union. The Union des Locataires de Schaerbeek (Schaerbeek Tenants’ Union), situated right next to the former Quartier Nord, was officially recognized by February 1975 and was aimed at preventing the recurrence of catastrophic consequences from colossal urban-renewal projects. The insurmountable difficulties of solving each family’s housing problem individually had become evident and made way for collective efforts based on an underlying principle of solidarity among renters, as opposed to individual social services. The union’s objective was threefold. First, it sought practical solutions to the dire housing situations that disproportionately affected the first-generation Moroccan and Turkish migrant families living in the neighborhood by collectively renting and managing apartments. [2] Second, it aimed to achieve long-term organizing, training and empowerment of its member-renters. Lastly, it intended to mobilize for the broader right to housing in the city.
Based on the experiences—both successes and failures—from the beginnings of organizing in the Northern Quarter, a reflection on the structure and strategy of the union became crucial. To this end, the union drew inspiration from organized renters abroad, specifically in France and the UK. Numerous exchanges and site visits were organized with the Holloway Tenant Cooperative, a renters’ cooperative in north London. This played a key role in shaping the union’s identity, decision-making model and overall structure. During the union’s first meeting, it was established that assemblies would be held bimonthly and be mandatory for its members. These gatherings would be conducted in French with translations provided in Arabic, Turkish, and Berber, and a monthly membership fee was introduced to join the union and become a member. The objective was to foster a higher level of member involvement, exceeding the traditional engagement seen in existing neighborhood committees.
Left: picture of the union’s bimonthly assembly. Right: picture of a field visit to the Holloway Tenant Cooperative in London. Source: Martens and Van Kamp 1985.
Wuune’s contemporary community organizing efforts in Brussels
Listening to Albert Martens recount the origins of the Union des Locataires de Schaerbeek and examining the booklets written by the union in the 1970s and 1980s reveals a level of historical symmetry between its founding in 1974 and the establishment of a new, independent renters’ union in the same neighborhood in 2024, exactly 50 years later. [3]
“WUUNE,” meaning “to inhabit” in the old Brussels dialect, is a union formed by and for its members, supported through monthly membership dues. We engage in actions and campaigns advocating for the right to a livable city and affordable, good-quality, decent, and non-discriminatory housing. Confronted with the city’s housing crisis, we assert that we must defend ourselves against the negligence of landlords and their discriminatory practices, as well as the authorities who allow rents to skyrocket, highlighting the mounting pressures of gentrification and the growing shortage of affordable housing in the city. In a similar way to the Union des Locataires de Schaerbeek, WUUNE operates on the principles of community organizing, which aims at organizing renters in a durable manner, as opposed to mobilizing renters around singular issues at specific times. This is done by involving residents through door-to-door outreach in specific neighborhoods to form local union branches and conduct campaigns focused on direct community action.
To facilitate the creation of the union in Brussels, we engaged in multiple exchanges with established community unions, notably Living Rent in Scotland and Alliance Citoyenne in France. These international connections have provided continuous support and training, enabling us, as members of WUUNE, to begin conducting door-to-door outreach in social-housing estates in the municipality of Schaerbeek. Like the Union des Locataires de Schaerbeek, we recognized the significance of basing ourselves on existing models and drawing inspiration from successful initiatives abroad. These efforts not only assisted in structuring our union but also sustained our motivation to persevere, driven by the belief that achievements elsewhere can be replicated as victories here in Brussels.
WUUNE emerged in part from the frustration of activists involved with the Front Anti-Expulsions, a Brussels-based activist collective fighting housing evictions through legal support and direct action. Members of the collective have repeatedly expressed the wish to engage with renters prior to their eviction notice, recognizing that interventions at this later stage often prove ineffective and vain. Similarly, the Union des Locataires de Schaerbeek was born out of a hard-learned lesson: in order to prevent mass-scale evictions, such as those in the Northern Quarter, organizing as renters is crucial. While the mass evictions half a century ago were justified in the name of “public utility,” today’s evictions typically involve isolated renters across different parts of the city facing eviction due to rent arrears. [4] Despite this distinction, the fundamental and dramatic issue of evictions formed the foundation of both unions.
An interest in community archives for collective struggles for housing justice
The stories of Brussels’ first renters’ union in the 1970s and parallels with WUUNE today reveal the methodological significance of the past, as they provide us with a living connection to the history of our neighborhood’s fight for housing justice. These historical accounts have informed union meetings and interactions with social renters in the neighborhood, strengthening WUUNE’s commitment to renter organizing and enabling a more profound and critical understanding of the historical trajectories in which contemporary efforts are situated. Furthermore, discussions are ongoing regarding the potential participation of Albert Martens in local branch meetings, and a video project is currently in development. This outward-facing dimension of community archives is particularly significant in realizing their political potential. The processes of reactivation and mediation—both bridging past and present and connecting archival materials with wider audiences—are fundamental in distinguishing community archives from mainstream archival institutions; and in prioritising voice, agency, and debate over reading, reception, and interpretation.

Video footage captured by the author in June 2024.
Organizing with an awareness of historical context is critical, especially considering the immediate pressures of everyday union activities, which lead to the postponement of necessary reflection. When often confronted with a pervasive sense of disempowerment, uncovering archival material can furthermore support housing-justice efforts in challenging notions of historical inevitability and political pessimism by providing tangible evidence of collective actions and their legacies today. Moreover, (re)collecting historical narratives of collective struggles can serve as a powerful tool to help amplify and contextualize current organizing efforts as well as open up present and future imaginaries of renter activism. In this way, archives, serving as sites of resistance, can function as crucial tools among many others for constructing a radical urban politics and advancing housing justice.
This work was supported by the Flemish research fund (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) under Grant [G038021N].
Bibliography
- Godart, P., Swyngedouw, E., Van Criekingen, M and van Heur, B. 2023. “Les expulsions de logement à Bruxelles : combien, qui et où ?”, Brussels Studies, doc. 176. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/brussels.6434.
- Graziani, T. and Shi, M. 2020. Data for Justice: Tensions and Lessons from the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project’s Work Between Academia and Activism.
- Martens, A. and Van Kamp, H. 1985. L’Union des locataires : dix ans. L’histoire d’un long voyage. 1975–1985, Brussels: Union des Locataires de Schaerbeek, pp. 1–72.
- Tubridy, F. 2024. “Militant Research in the Housing Movement: The Community Action Tenants Union Rent Strike History Project”, Antipode, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 1027–1046. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.13014.
Further reading
- Almeida, N. and Hoyer, J. 2021. “Introduction”, The Social Movement Archive (vol. 2, pp. 1–13), Sacramento: Litwin Books.
- Autonomous Geographies Collective. 2010. “Beyond Scholar Activism: Making Strategic Interventions Inside and Outside the Neoliberal University”, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 245–275.
- Breës, G. and Casals, L. 2023. “À Bruxelles, l’héritage des luttes urbaines entre institution et contestation”, in Collectif Asphalte (eds.), Tenir la ville. Luttes et résistances contre le capitalisme urbain, Lille : Éditions Les Étaques, pp. 185–195.
- Burgum, S. 2019. “Squatting, Trespass, and Direct Housing Action: A Report on ‘Making Space’”, Radical Housing Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 227–232. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54825/RIDR8984.
- Burgum, S. 2022. “This City Is an Archive: Squatting History and Urban Authority”, Journal of Urban History, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 504–522.
- Daloul, R., Grandinetti, T., Hetterly, E., Makhmuryan, H., Miranda, K., Nicholson, L., Ramos, I. and Wong, D. 2020. “We Have Always Been Here! Rebel Archives: Radical Memory Work as Resistance, Collective Care, and Healing”, Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide, Los Angeles: UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy.
- Demey, T. 1992. Bruxelles, chronique d’une capitale en chantier. 2. De l’Expo ’58 au siège de la CEE, Brussels: Legrain.
- Martens, A. 2009. “Dix ans d’expropriations et d’expulsions au Quartier Nord à Bruxelles (1965–1975) : quels héritages ?”, Brussels Studies, doc. 29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/brussels.685.
- Martens, A., Lievens, J. and Brasseur, N. 1974. De grote stad, een geplande chaos? De Noordwijk van krot tot Manhattan, Leuven: Davidsfonds.
- Roy, E. A., Rolnik, R., Graziani, T. and Malson, H. (eds.). 2020. Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide, Los Angeles: UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy.
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