Community Organising Guides

On this page, I aim to consolidate a bunch of FREE TO DOWNLOAD guides and resources for tenant communities hoping to organise and advocate for their own causes. These aren’t all resources we put into practice – simply because we weren’t aware of all that was out there at the time. But they’re all invaluable guides put together by people and groups who have lived through eviction, displacement, regeneration, and gentrification or who are advocating for better conditions.

  1. Organising and resistance
  2. Evidence-gathering

It’s a live page, so I’ll keep adding things as I go along (recommendations welcome – send via the Contact page). In no particular order…

Organising and resistance

  1. Resource Centre. Starting a Group. 2025. Website: https://www.resourcecentre.org.uk/information-category/starting-a-group

“[This resource] provides advice about getting people involved in your group, deciding the purpose of your group, and agreeing a set of rules or principles that will govern your group. It provides practical information”.

2. London Tenants Federation (and others). Staying Put: An anti-gentrification handbook for council estates in London. Calverts Co-Operative. 2014: https://justspace.org.uk/2014/06/19/staying-put-an-anti-gentrification-handbook-for-council-estates-in-london/

“[This handbook] is designed to help local communities learn about gentrification and the alternatives they can fight for. Through the experiences of council tenants, leaseholders and the wider community in London, it contains ideas, stories, tools and resources”.

  1. Sendra, Pablo, and Daniel Fitzpatrick. Community-Led Regeneration: A toolkit for residents and planners. UCL Press, 2020: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/81883

“This toolkit is designed for communities resisting the demolition of their homes and/or proposing their own alternative plan, and for planners, architects, professionals, scholars and volunteers providing support to those community groups”.

Evidence-gathering

  1. UCL Urban Lab and Engineering Exchange for Just Space and the London Tenants Federation. Refurbishment and Demolition: Community Toolkit, June 2015: https://s16652.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/ucl150_a4-demolition-toolkit_v4_online.pdf

The booklet is designed to help social housing tenants and residents: when decisions are being made about demolition and refurbishment of their homes; to build an inventory of the environmental impacts of different options; to get professional advice on costs and benefits of different options.

  1. JustLife. How to Set Up a Peer Research Group: A step-by-step manual co-produced by peer researchers with lived experience of housing insecurity, April 2025: https://www.justlife.org.uk/our-work/research-and-policy/peer-research-manual-2

“Peer research is a wonderful tool that can uncover otherwise under-reported aspects of a topic, give substance to already known issues and build peers’ skills and confidence. … [It’s vital to] involve peers in research to improve services and gain deeper insights, in a way that goes beyond box-ticking”.