Organizing How-Tos and Resources
Find Your Neighbours
In order to organize as tenants we need to get to know each other. Knocking on your neighbours' doors is, under normal circumstances, one of the most effective ways to do this. However, people may be uncomfortable with this during our current pandemic. Some other alternatives include:
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Leave a brief note for your neighbours at their doors
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Post signs in your building's hallways and lobby with contact information (see "Organizing Tools" below for options that don't involve giving out your personal phone number)
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The Halifax Tenants' Union also has a Find Your Neighbours contact form that you can fill out. We will connect you with fellow tenants in the same neighbourhood or building as you who have also filled out the form. We will not share this information with anyone other than your neighbours.
Organizing Tools
Once you know your neighbours, there are a variety of ways to communicate in order to organize. Tenants' unions in other cities have had lots of success with building lobby meetings - once your group is large enough, this helps you get more neighbours involved. During the current provincial state of emergency, we have to rely on other communication options, however. Here are a couple that other tenants groups have used.
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Fongo is an app that will let you set up a phone number for texting or setting up a WhatApp or similar group for your neighbours. This is particularly helpful if not everyone has internet access or a computer.
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You can also set up a secret Facebook group to communicate with your neighbours
Keep Your Rent in Halifax
The Halifax Tenants' Union isn't directly organizing a Keep Your Rent campaign in Halifax, but we have some resources for tenants who want to organize their own building or neighbours at this page, where we have updated the information from Toronto's Keep Your Rent to replace Ontario-specific details with the equivalent Nova Scotia details.