Th eorizing the urban housing commons

Don Nonini

Abstract: Th is article theorizes the making and unmaking of the urban housing commons in Amsterdam. Th e article reviews the literature on the urban housing commons, sets out the analytics of use values and exchange values for housing, and situates these analytics within the transition from dominance of industrial to fi nance capital in the during neoliberalization from the mid-1970s to the present. A vibrant housing commons in Amsterdam came into existence by the 1980s because of two social movements that pressed the Dutch state to institu- tionalize this commons—the New Left movement within the Dutch Labor Party, and the squatters’ movement in Amsterdam. Th e subsequent shift in dominance from industrial to fi nance capital has led to the decline of both movements and the erosion of the housing commons. Keywords: Amsterdam, fi nance capital, neoliberalization, New Left movement, squatters’ movement, urban commons

Th is article theorizes the urban commons in the oretical approach anchored in an analytics for case of the housing commons of Amsterdam, theorizing the making and unmaking of the the Netherlands, from the 1960s to the present. commons. In the second section, I provide evi- Th e making and unmaking of urban commons dence for the existence of a housing commons like housing in Amsterdam can only be under- in Amsterdam in the mid-1980s. Th e third sec- stood if urban commons are theorized both in tions applies the theoretical concepts of the terms of their scaled political economy and of article to explain the making of the housing com- the everyday interventions of social movement mons—the particular developments in postwar actors, as their actions were channeled by but capitalism in the Netherlands from the 1960s also transformed the historically and geograph- to the 1980s that empowered two diff erent so- ically specifi c arrangements between classes and cial movements to transform the Dutch state the modern state that constituted that political to establish the housing commons. Th e fourth economy. section turns to how transformations in Dutch In the fi rst section of the article, I review ear- capitalism in time and space led to shift s in po- lier studies of the urban commons—a relatively litical dominance away from industrial capital new area of research—and set out my own the- and organized labor toward fi nance capital, such

Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 79 (2017): 23–38 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2017.790103 24 | Don Nonini that conservative political elites came to power framework of political economy and sociocul- and began to erode the social protections for tural analysis, and grounded in specifi c empir- city residents of the housing commons. Th e ar- ical examples. Th is article seeks to accomplish ticle concludes with an assessment of the recent this task by fi rst theorizing the urban commons, literature in the study of the urban commons in then, second, illustrating some of the key pro- light of the fi ndings of this article. cesses that make urban commons possible and allow them to persist—at least for a long period of time, if not indefi nitely. Th eorizing the urban commons Recent articles on the urban commons begin to suggest the challenges in theorizing the ur- In the past two decades in anthropology and ban commons, but they do not go far enough other social science disciplines, a lively and pro- in tying the formation and persistence of ur- ductive exploration of the commons as an al- ban commons to contemporary capitalism and ternative to capitalist processes of production, contemporary states, to which they are surely exchange, and consumption has emerged (Bol- connected. For example, Amanda Huron (2015: lier 2002; Nonini 2007; Ostrom 1990; Ostrom et 963), drawing on her study of limited-equity al. 1999). Researchers have focused on the va- cooperatives in Washington, DC, contends that riety of commons, their modes of governance, urban commons are characterized by two traits and the preconditions for their existence and that distinguish them from rural commons. persistence. An increasingly prolifi c literature First, they are “enacted in saturated space … has come to substantiate the important claim that is already densely packed with people, com- that commons do indeed exist in a great vari- peting uses, and capitalist investment.” Second, ety of environments, social settings, periods of they are “constituted by the coming together of development, and political systems (Ostrom et strangers.” al. 1999). Maja Bruun’s (2015) very interesting and However, there has been one key shortcom- well-researched study of Danish housing coop- ing to this approach: almost universally, the eratives provides another example of the urban commons in question are rural. Within the social housing commons. Her argument about “open sciences, only very recently has it become possi- access”—that open access to the urban com- ble to think productively about the existence of mons must be seen as a “central social value urban commons, of the forms they might take, arising from democratic open societies” (2015: and of the conditions that make their existence 156)—should be noted. It appears to challenge possible. Initial conceptualization in sorting out the generalization in the commons literature the diff erent kinds of urban commons is an (e.g., Ostrom 1990) that the commons has been important start. Th e distinction by Ida Susser eroded when there are no rules that exclude and Stéphane Tonnelat (2013) between three outsiders from using it. kinds of urban commons has been particularly Turning to another approach, Martin Korn- helpful—they refer to commons around pub- berger and Christian Borch (2015: 8), in their lic services or goods, such as schools, housing, survey of urban commons in Europe, make transport or health care; around public spaces the important argument that “density and re- of interaction and encounter, such as streets and lationality are key factors in what constitutes parks; and around public artistic expression that the urban commons.” Th ey argue that the com- engages the creativity of city residents, such as mon property literature of Elinor Ostrom and murals and street performances. colleagues (1999) make a confused distinction While a signifi cant advance, these refl ections between “subtractive” resources within a com- on the urban commons need to be more fully de- mons (where one person using a resource sub- veloped theoretically within a broader political tracts from it being used by others, as in the case Th eorizing the urban housing commons | 25 of natural resources like water, timber, or fi sh- venues for public speaking, and so forth. Urban eries) and “non-subtractive ones,” like knowl- housing is one such key resource that, along edge or close proximity of city residents to one with other public goods and services and spaces another. Th ey claim that within cities, non-sub- of encounter (Susser and Tonnelat 2013), make tractable resource commons prevail, for exam- the production of these other forms of collec- ple, that consumption by one person of a park tive “resources” possible; this is indeed what or shopping mall does not decrease the value amounts to urban “collective consumption” these have for others but actually increases it, as (Cas tells 1983). Collectivities of people together when crowds come together for people to enjoy produce collective use values as products of the presence of others, or to observe what oth- their sociality—and they seek to gain access to ers are purchasing (Kornberger and Borch 2015: them wherever possible. 6). Kornberger and Borch go on to refer to the However, city life is not only about use val- urban commons as being a city’s “atmospher- ues but also about the exchange values that con- ics,” its spheres of sociality and connectedness temporary capitalism seeks to create. Broadly within networks (2015: 8–11). speaking, it can do so in one of two ways. Th e Finally, the literature on urban social move- one most familiar from interpretations of clas- ments provides valuable insights into how par- sical Marxism is the production of exchange ticipants in urban social movements think about value through the capitalist industrial labor pro- the commons and seek through their activism to cess, which involves the appropriation of surplus bring into being more just sharing of resources. value and its subsequent realization when the in- David Harvey (2013a) points to the collective dustrial capitalist sells “his” product, thus lead- eff orts that urban residents have long made at ing to his accumulation of capital (Marx 1976). “commoning,” and refers to the literature on What is less recognized, if at all, is the risk the “rights to the city” that inform social move- that surplus value once appropriated may not ments (and social movement theory). Maribel be realized, that is, a variety of structural condi- Casas-Cortés and colleagues (2014) and Don tions may make it impossible for commodities Mitchell (2003) provide other studies of how to be sold in such a way that their surplus value participants in social movements have sought can be converted to the money-form within cy- to bring about urban commons. cles of capital accumulation. Historically, this As I argue here, each of these approaches has oft en happened in periodic economic crises to the urban commons provides useful contri- because of overaccumulation and undercon- butions but has shortcomings when assessed sumption. As Harvey (2013b: 1–35, 379–394) in light of the more explicit theorization that has recently noted, realizing surplus value, in follows. addition to the sales of commodities by the in- dustrial capitalist, implicates three other forms of capital, according to Marx in Capital, Volume Toward an analytics of the urban 3—rent capital, merchant capital, and money commons in an era of the rise of or fi nance capital. For our purposes, because fi nance capital fi nance capital provides the credit system that allows industrial capital to reproduce itself, its Urban commons are systemic arrangements strategies are key to the realization process. Fi- through which city residents create and main- nance capital also strategically mediates the op- tain what Marx called “use values”—things of eration of rent capital, as when fi nanciers loan utility—and make them available for collective capital to landowners to construct buildings use by one another. Th ese things can take a va- for rents or sale. For these strategies to succeed, riety of forms—schools, public health facilities, however, fi nance capitalists must continually housing, street space, or murals, performance seek new ways of appropriating and transform- 26 | Don Nonini ing use values into exchange values to add to the the attempts by private capitalists to appropriate surplus capital they already have on hand. the use values of urban commons are blunted or Fortunately for fi nance and rent capitalists, prevented outright, then such urban commons many kinds of use value lie “right at hand” for will likely be maintained and strengthened over their appropriation, for its transformation into time. If, to the contrary, state policies and pro- exchange values, and thus for the continued re- grams weaken urban commons by allowing the alization and accumulation of surplus capital. continual advance by fi nance capitalists in the Th ere is a substantial overlap in the use values frontiers of commodifi cation of these use val- that might remain noncommodifi ed within ur- ues, then urban commons will be unmade. Th is ban commons such as in housing on one hand is what happened in the case of the Amsterdam and those use values that, if captured by fi nan- housing commons. cial and rental capitalists, could be transformed Th e history of the Amsterdam housing com- into profi table exchange values allowing for mons has been conditioned by the political their continued accumulation of capital, on economy of transition from Fordist industrial the other hand. Th ere is therefore a dialectical capitalism to a postindustrial fi nance- and ser- contradiction between those progressive so- vice-based capitalism in the Netherlands (Har- cial forces that seek not only to create but also vey 1989; Smith 2010). Edward Soja (2000) to preserve urban commons consisting of such sets out three major changes that apply to Am- shared use values, and the fi nancial and rental sterdam as they do to other cities in the global capitalist forces that seek to capture these use economy. Th ese are “the increasing internation- values to commodify them and transform them alization of metropolitan regions,” “a pervasive into sources for private accumulation. It is this industrial restructuring,” and the emergence of key contradiction that the above-referenced “increasing social and economic polarization” literature on the urban commons fails to ade- (2000: 132–137). quately deal with or consider. An important shift in the advent of fl exible In the case of urban housing, local construc- accumulation toward a postindustrial and ser- tion capitalists, rent capitalists and fi nance cap- vice-based Dutch economy bears directly on italists (e.g., bankers) who provide both of the the housing commons. As industry underwent former with credit as they do to residents (who decline in the Netherlands, so too did Dutch in- need to buy or rent housing) together seek to dustrial capital and its broader Fordist commit- gain maximum control over the available hous- ment to the state’s provision of welfare services ing stock within their ambits of political infl u- to industrial workers as a means of keeping wages ence vis-à-vis the state and residents. Moreover, low. In its place, Dutch fi nance capital sought to in alliance with other domestic and interna- reduce state welfare expenditures for the working tional fi nance and development capitalists, they population, including housing, which competed will scale up to form coalitions to seek such con- with its own capacities to capture use values trol. Th is implies concerted political strategies (e.g., in housing, intellectual property) from the to infl uence state policies with respect to the working population in the service sector, and commodifi cation of housing stock. subjected the population of wage earners to the How such dialectical encounters between city priorities of fi nancial capitalist accumulation. residents seeking to create and preserve urban commons and capitalists seeking to appropriate the use values that these commons represent are Th e housing commons resolved depends on the disposition of political of Amsterdam, circa 1985 forces such as social movements, political par- ties, and contemporary states. If state policies By the mid to late 1980s, a commons based on pressed by movements and parties are such that social housing as a collective use value had come Th eorizing the urban housing commons | 27 into existence in Amsterdam. During the prior Amsterdam’s social housing system con- two decades, new social housing had been built stituted a true commons that shared the fi nite on land where private rental units had been common resources of the city’s housing stock demolished, and tens of thousands of private among the users who formed the majority of its rentals had been purchased, renovated, and population. It was a true commons when it: converted into social housing. Not only had the national and municipal governments and • made all potential users (i.e., residents) eligi- Amsterdam’s 14 housing corporations come ble for social housing and provided a shared together to support the growth in new social means of access through the application housing, but they also had taken measures to process; expand rental subsidies for all but the most • provided them access to housing according wealthy groups and declared by the mid-1970s to their specifi cally defi ned needs (e.g., family that access to aff ordable housing was the right of size); any resident of Amsterdam. • allotted rental subsidies to those unable to af- Th e coalition was committed to meeting res- ford housing that otherwise met their needs; idents’ universal rights to aff ordable housing; • set rent maxima, through a “point system” all residents irrespective of income level were (puntensysteem), based on the quality of spe- eligible for social housing. A centralized appli- cifi c housing units, which allowed residents cation system for rental housing set up through to rent, and made it diffi cult for landlords to the Amsterdam housing department applied to exclude potential users on the basis of their all renters, and both social and private landlords incomes1; were required to go through the system. Th is • prevented private house owners from with- prevented private landlords from selecting their drawing their own housing from the base own tenants and thus brought all but the most resource of the housing stock, or imposing expensive rental housing under the administra- rents that would prevent the majority of the tion of the municipal government. population from having access to it; Lower- and middle-income tenants were • controlled the expansion of the housing stock allotted rental subsidies determined by their in such a way as to commit the large majority income levels, number of children, and other of new housing to the social housing sector, criteria of need. It was determined that average and not to the private sector; workers should not have to spend more than 17 • provided mechanisms for collective decision percent of their income on rent, while those at making that allowed for the active participa- the lowest income level should not have to spend tion by residents in decisions that vitally af- more than 10 percent of their wages on housing fected their own use of housing as a resource. (Stouten 2010: 71–72). Rent stabilization regula- tions made it possible for residents to fi nd stable Th ese characteristics of the housing commons housing over time and, as it was put locally, es- in Amsterdam in the 1980s overlap with the tablish a “housing career” in social housing. criteria that Ostrom (1990: 58–102) has set out Residents’ committees, representatives from as the “design principles” for a long-enduring the housing associations, the citywide tenants’ commons. association and district councils (coming from By 1982, 41.6 percent of all housing stock 14 governing district councils citywide), and was in social housing (an increase from 18 per- government employees (e.g., social workers, cent in 1950)—compared to owner-occupied architects) played a key role in setting out these housing (6.3 percent) and private rental hous- regulations and implementing them, thus de- ing (52.1 percent)—and continued to increase mocratizing governance of the commons (Schuil- to 54.3 percent by 1992, while private rentals ing and Van der Veer 2004: 8). decreased to 34 percent (Schuiling and Van 28 | Don Nonini der Veer 2004: 4). As a result, 95 percent of all housing based on low rents that the working rented dwellings in Amsterdam fell within the class could aff ord, subsidized by the state if nec- point system as recently as 2004, when only essary, was crucial to maintaining low wage lev- 20 percent of the stock was owner-occupied, els consistent with capitalist accumulation. Th is which meant that “roughly 75 percent of the was an understanding that crossed the religious Amsterdam housing market is regulated, call it and political lines of the “pillars” (zuilen) that a ‘pseudo-’ market” (7–8). “vertically” divided Dutch society into liberals, socialists, Catholics, and Protestants, was sup- ported by both Catholic and Protestant trade Th e making of Amsterdam’s unions, and is fairly explicit in the record. Ac- housing commons, 1960s–1980s cording to Frans Dieleman (1994: 450):

Th e making of the Amsterdam housing com- Housing policy became an instrument by mons by the mid-1980s, and the political-eco- which coalition governments could reach nomic conditions that made it possible, can a compromise on broader economic and only be understood within the history of class social issues. Housing played the same relations, Dutch capitalism, and the Dutch state role in the social contracts resulting from in the postwar period. negotiations between the labor unions and the employers. In general, moderation of Reconstruction of postwar Dutch capitalism, rent increases in support for non-profi t pillarization, and the accommodations housing were prerequisites for agreement between capital and labor: 1940–1960 on relatively low wage demands and low rates of infl ation in the private sector. Both Social housing, or nonprofi t housing, was fi rst are considered benefi cial to the competi- undertaken by the late nineteenth- and early tive edge of the Netherlands … in the in- twentieth-century Dutch state as it recovered ternationally oriented economy. land from the sea and determined to put it to use for settlement and housing by making land Th e Amsterdam housing commons available for development by nonprofi t philan- comes into existence: Pressures from thropies, foundations, and cooperatives, which within and outside the government established predecessors of the contempo- rary housing associations in the Netherlands. How did the Amsterdam housing commons Th us, as churches, charitable foundations, labor come about? I contend that there were two dis- unions, and workmen’s cooperatives sought land tinct social movements: one within the Dutch for housing development, they did so within the Labor Party and one outside it that pressed framework set by the Dutch state, not by private the state to create the conditions for universal corporations (Stouten 2010). access by residents of Amsterdam (and other During the postwar years of reconstruction, Dutch cities) to aff ordable housing. Th e emer- a corporatism that brought together capital, la- gence of this commons occurred in the pivotal bor, and the government was associated with year of 1973—the year of peak power of the the rebuilding of Dutch industrial capitalism in working class within the postwar corporat- an era of decolonization, and this broad accom- ist accommodation between employers, trade modation between capital and labor persisted unions, and the government. Activists in these through the 1960s. What made labor peace pos- two social movements had diff erent strategies sible given the strength of the trade unions was for achieving this goal and diff erent visions of the clear understanding by all sides that social politics, worked in separate spheres (party poli- Th eorizing the urban housing commons | 29 tics and civil society), and had goals that were at by extension to the latter’s civil society connec- times antagonistic, but the combination of their tions (360–361). According to Steven Wolinetz pressures on the state led to the emergence of (1977: 363): the housing commons. One social movement formed in the late Th e present-day [1977] PvdA [Labor 1960s was the New Left (Nieuw Links), an un- Party] is a cross between a parliamentary offi cial faction within the Dutch Labor Party party and a social action center. … Mem- committed to the radicalization of the party’s bers of Parliament supplement legislative objectives and to the democratization of its gov- activities with visits to designated areas in ernance. Its activists were young and well edu- which they assume the role of ombudsman, cated, and tended to come out of careers in the listening to and examining local griev- media and professional services. Th ey sought ances. … Anxious to maintain ties with to move beyond the party’s long-standing con- those who are promoting change—anxious stituency of the trade unions to bring in youth, to maintain ties with those at the bottom— students, professionals, and others participat- the party supports, and encourages and ing in post-1968 anti-imperialist, feminist, and occasionally organizes action groups. environmentalist movements (Wolinetz 1977: 354–366). Having joined the Labor Party in the Such action groups included those advocating mid to late 1960s, New Left activists quickly specifi c issues including “improvement of the came to challenge the then dominant Labor environment or demands about a specifi c neigh- Party leadership, practices of governance, and borhood or project.” long-standing political economic objectives. By Th is was the New Left –dominated Labor 1971, members of the New Left formed the ma- Party that came to power in 1973 to form the jority of the party’s executive and included the cabinet. Th is government was far party chairman (356). more democratic and radical in orientation than New Left demands incorporated into the its predecessors, particularly in forming connec- party’s platform went far beyond the corporatist tions between its leadership at the national level, accommodation, and set out not only new goals its local members, and party-affi liated aldermen but also new means for reaching decisions and and municipal counselors. Whether or not they setting policies within the party and in society were formerly members of New Left (which at large wherever the party had a presence. It dissolved itself in 1971), Labor Party leaders in demanded that the party incorporate the “pri- the cabinet were thoroughly infused with and ority for the needs of lower income groups,” un- sought to implement these New Left principles. dertake “the redistribution of excess corporate One such Labor Party leader was Jan Schae- profi ts,” and institute greater “public control fer, who began his political career as a leader over private investment and fi nancial institu- in the movement to resist modernistic renewal tions” (360). in the Amsterdam neighborhood of De Pijp Th e New Left , once integrated into the par- during the 1960s and early 1970s. Later he made ty’s highest leadership, called for and imple- his way into the higher ranks of the Labor Party mented new democratizing and decentralizing at the national level and became state secre- forms of governance within the party and in its tary of public housing in the Den Uyl national relationships to locales. Core bodies of decision government from 1973 to 1977. According to making within the party were democratized and Justus Uitermark (2012: 203), “In that position opened up to participation by ordinary mem- [Schaefer] would help to create the institutional bers as well as leaders, and there was increased preconditions for a further deepening and accountability by the leaders to members—and broadening of the residents’ movement.” Schae- 30 | Don Nonini fer helped to popularize and institutionalize the government, and tried to liaise with both the slogan of “building for the neighborhood” and squatters and the police to reach some sort of to work out concepts for the “compact city.” solution. It was aft er this that I became more Under Schaefer’s infl uence, policies changed personally involved in the squatters’ movement, to focus on small transformations that would and decided to become a squatter.” Later in the preserve neighborhoods (and tenure for their interview he said, “Th e Labor Party and other residents in social and squatted housing), and parties on the left took a kind of pride in ac- centered on renovation instead of demolition commodating to and being connected to the (Uitermark 2012). Over this period, the central protests and contemporary social movements government made ample funding available for of the time.” such projects. In 1978, Schaefer moved back to Uitermark (2012: 204–205) asserts (but I have Amsterdam, became a local party leader and an not been able to independently verify) that many alderman, and promoted the building of more Labor Party activists were able to take advantage social housing. In this period, social housing of their educations and local connections to be- construction in Amsterdam increased from come offi cial employees of the municipality, who 1,100 units in 1978 to 9,000 units in 1984 in large were then able to exert their leverage on behalf part because of his and his supporters’ eff orts. of social housing and collective self-organization One informant I interviewed in Amsterdam of the housing associations. in 2016, without being prompted, mentioned Th e other, “outside” social movement was Schaefer’s role: “He was bigger than life, in fact a squatters’ movement consisting largely of a very big man, a baker by trade, who got deeply youth, the majority of whom were students involved in squatting then in the Labor Party.” committed to the physical occupation of hous- Th e same informant, Jan H., a man in his ing that had been left vacant by the urban re- late fi ft ies who had worked for the Amsterdam newal projects of the municipal government municipality for many years, mentioned the in the 1970s. Th e Amsterdam squatters’ move- close connections between activists working on ment has been extensively written about within housing, those in other social movements, and the social movements literature (Duivenvoor- Labor Party members in Amsterdam: “At that den 2000; Kadir 2014, Mamadouh 1992; Owen time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, students 2009; Pruijt 2003, 2004). For reasons of space, I were extremely politically active. We were not summarize key aspects of the squatters’ move- only in the squatting movement but also in the ment as it bears on the making of Amsterdam’s antinuclear movement, in the feminist move- housing commons. ment, and in the beginning of the environmen- First, the squatting movement in Amsterdam tal movement. Many of the same people would entered its initial phase in the late 1970s. When be involved in these diff erent movements.” the municipal government initiated a large- Jan went on to mention how he got involved scale and thoroughgoing physical transforma- in the squatter movement and eventually be- tion of Amsterdam’s city center, involving the came a squatter himself. He was active in the construction of a subway system and express- Young Socialists (the youth wing of the Labor way, the demolition of older housing, and the Party). One day, the chair of the neighborhood’s construction of new large housing complexes Young Socialists chapter parked his car in front for the city’s workers, it faced determined op- of a building where there was a police action to position by protesters. Some were squatters who evict squatters, and the squatters were trying to began to occupy distressed and unoccupied resist the police who sought to evict them. He housing in the Nieuwmarkt district of central and the other members of the chapter could Amsterdam, while other residents, not squat- not help but become involved: “We telephoned ters themselves, supported squatting because of Labor Party offi cials and offi cials in the city their political commitments to social housing Th eorizing the urban housing commons | 31 and the promise it represented of universal ac- Given this massive accomplishment, how cess to housing. Squatters refused to be evicted has the housing commons come to be partially or to allow the demolition of the preexisting and unmade? oft en distressed housing (Fainstein 2010: 85–88; Owen 2009). Second, squatting in Amsterdam in the mid- Th e unmaking of Amsterdam’s 1970s began to proliferate beyond the Nieu- housing commons, 1980s–2007 wmarkt district to other areas of the city. As Stagnation, economic crisis, and the squatting of empty housing increased all over emergence of a post-Fordist fi nance the city, squatters began to network together and service economy and formed neighborhood “squatters consult- ing hours” (Kraakspreekuur), cafés, low-cost/ Trends “toward intensifi ed industrial restruc- no-cost neighborhood restaurants, social cen- turing” (Soja 2000: 134) begun in the 1970s con- ters, a radio station, and much more. Squatters tinued in the 1980s, as older industries facing groups across the city were able to scale up into a international competition retrenched labor and citywide network. When squatters in one neigh- closed down operations. Unemployment rose borhood faced evictions, they would be joined steeply from 6 percent in 1975–1979 to 15 per- by squatters from outside the neighborhood to cent in 1983. However, services employment was resist the police (Anonymous 1982, 2000; Kadir the one sector that showed increases (Wolinetz 2014; Owen 2009). 1989: 87–89, 97n29). By the 1990s, the shift by Not only did squatters come to symbolize the Amsterdam labor force away from indus- the universal right to housing that led them to trial employment and toward service work in adopt extreme measures, oft en exposing them- producer services (e.g., design, accounting, and selves to physical danger and discomfort. Th ey advertising), the media and creative/artistic sec- also began to act as a collective social force that tors (e.g., fi lm and publishing), and in fi nancial imposed enormous fi nancial, political, and services was well underway. “Increasing inter- moral costs on private fi nancial capital, as va- nationalization of metropolitan regions” (Soja cant privately owned buildings were squatted in 2000: 132–133) was also occurring. Since the for years on end, rents went unpaid, and build- 1980s, Amsterdam’s position within the hierar- ings could not be legally sold in the interim, chy of global cities around international fi nance while vacant buildings combined with evictions and fi nancial services (accounting, law, etc.) has drew bad press to the failure of the city’s govern- become more prominent (133). Finance capital ment and private capital to house its population. has grown in power as industrial capital has re- Th e standard narrative by Susan Fainstein ceded (or merged with fi nance capital) with the claims that the squatters’ movement on its own rise of postindustrial labor relations. mounted a successful attrition campaign against In light of the transition from an industrial a municipal government engaged in urban re- to a postindustrial, service- and fi nance-based newal and could take credit for “reversing the economy, there has been “increasing social and entire approach to planning for a quarter of a economic polarization” among the population century” (2010: 87–88). Th is article shows oth- characterized by “increasing fl exibility in the erwise. Th e confl uence of the democratization labor market evident in the growth of ‘tempo- movement within the New Left –infl uenced rary’ and ‘part-time’ employment” (Soja 2000: Labor Party and the municipal government it 136). Studies of Amsterdam’s service sector controlled, and the eff orts of the squatting move- confi rm its ubiquity, the unequal bargaining ment, taken together, led to the institutionaliza- power between employers and service workers, tion of the housing commons of Amsterdam by and the contingent and precarious conditions the late 1970s. of labor and subsistence for large numbers of 32 | Don Nonini the latter (Soja 2000; Terhorst and Van de Ven constituted direct competition with fi nancial 1986). Th ere is evidence of very high levels of capitalists because subsidies fi nanced new pri- economic precariousness among creative work- vate housing construction (since subsidies also ers in the Netherlands (Henneken and Bennett applied to private housing), while the govern- 2016: 37). ment threatened privately fi nanced owner- Th e erosion of the housing commons must occupant housing construction by increasingly be viewed in the context of this increasing eco- supporting competing housing associations’ nomic insecurity among the working popula- construction of owner-occupant housing. Fi- tion of Amsterdam. nance capitalists found their allies in conserva- tive party leaders (e.g., the Christian Democrat Neoliberalization and threats to Appeal) who shared government power aft er the housing commons, 1989–2007 1977, and viewed the fi nancial obligations im- posed on the state by Den Uyl’s 50-year subsidy During these years, the power of the trade policy as particularly obnoxious as they sought unions to dictate wages and working conditions to impose austerities on the welfare state in the declined severely relative to the prior balance name of reducing government defi cits (Diele- between labor and capital within the postwar man 1994; Priemus 1990). Th is part of the Den corporatist arrangement. Given labor’s weak- Uyl policy had to go; by 1995, it went. ened position, from 1977 through 1989 the Lib- “Housing in the Nineties,” the 1989 housing eral-Christian Democratic governments that memorandum put forward by ’s succeeded the Den Uyl government began to center-right government signaled the inception side decisively with employers to implement new of the neoliberal turn by reducing subsidies for plans for government intervention on the side of social housing and promoting owner-occupied capital. housing instead. Th e memorandum also out- In light of industrial labor’s decline and new lined a series of measures that privatized housing state austerity policies, from 1977 to 1989, fi - associations in the Netherlands, began to put in nance capitalists (managers of mortgage banks, place legal measures that imposed more fi nancial pension funds, international banks) and their al- responsibility on them to deal with declines in lies in the housing construction industry placed state support and fi nancing, and shift ed respon- pressure on the center-right governments that sibility for the development of social housing succeeded the Den Uyl government to reduce from the national to the municipal state (Kadi its mandated state fi nancing of new construc- 2011: 10–12; Van Gent 2013: 510). In 1995, the tion of social rental housing by the housing government engaged in a complex swap that can- associations, and to redirect and increase state celed out all its outstanding subsidies to housing subsidies toward their construction of new (and associations for its outstanding loans to the asso- conversion of old) housing for owner-occupa- ciations. Th e policy cut the fi nancial ties between tion, whose mortgage debt these fi nancial capi- the government and housing associations and talists directly or indirectly provided. made the latter fi nancially and legally autono- Th e Den Uyl housing policy committed the mous from the state (Kadi 2011: 11). government to provide subsidies over a 50-year As Wouter Van Gent (2013: 510–511) ob- period for new construction in the social rental serves, the change devolved fi nancial risk down and private rental sectors in return for rent sub- to the housing associations, whose residents were sidies provided to tenants (Priemus 1987, 1990). expected to reach collective decisions about Th e New Left –infl uenced Labor government renovation and the construction of new hous- thus sought to prolong protections for renters ing—funded no longer by state subsidies but by beyond its own tenure in offi ce. However, state the surpluses that housing associations accu- subsidies at a period of economic contraction mulated through sales of social housing. Th eorizing the urban housing commons | 33

One consequence of the fi nancial liberal- Still, the New Left ’s struggle to democratize ization of housing association status was that Labor Party politics and to sustain the hous- members of these associations faced pressure ing commons has left its mark on Amsterdam’s to pass on collective responsibility for decision local politics. As has been common elsewhere making within the associations to new pro- among progressive social movement activists fessional managers. Th e latter became crucial experiencing neoliberalization during the past actors pushing the trend toward increased com- four decades (Hasenfeld and Garrow 2012), modifi cation of housing. Treating the housing there has been a shift by activists away from associations as capital-generating entities, the being the advocates for the housing commons new managers sought to accumulate wealth in to becoming the quasi-state service providers them by selling units of social housing on the for its constituency of social renters as housing private market to prospective owner-occupants has undergone neoliberalization. According in line with new government policies. to Uitermark (2012: 210–211), “the offi cial or- ganizations for resident support—the Tenant Defeat from within, attrition from without Association (Huurdersvereniging), the Agency for Housing Support (Amsterdams Steunpunt Political changes at the level of the national gov- Wonen), the housing union (Woonbond ), the ernment with respect to social housing in the tenant representatives on committees, commu- housing commons were decisive in placing de- nity workers—in practice serve as consultants fi ning features of the Amsterdam housing com- for individual tenants rather than as move- mons in jeopardy. Between 1985 and 2006, the ment organizations that bring together diff erent social rented sector within Amsterdam munici- groups.” pality rose from approximately 48 percent of all As to the “outside” squatters’ movement in housing stock in 1985 to a peak of 55 percent in Amsterdam, its troubled history of internal con- 1995, but has steadily declined since then to less fl ict from the late 1970s to 1980s onward goes than 50 percent by 2010; over the same period, far to explain its recent ineff ectiveness as a but- owner-occupied housing has increased steadily tress to the housing commons. Th is history of from 8 percent to more than 20 percent (Ronald confl ict has been well documented elsewhere, 2016: 6–7). Th e queue of eligible renters wait- particularly as its internal divisions rendered ing for a social rental unit in the city to become its neighborhood activists incapable of scaling available has lengthened, with a waiting time up for citywide actions (Duivenvoorden 2000; now of several years for many applicants. Mamadouh 1992; Owen 2009; Pruijt 2003, Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to see po- 2004). Other changes in the legal and political litical-economic transformations at the national context of squatting are also relevant. Th ese scale as determinant without paying attention include the increased violence of police at evic- to the agency of activists within the dynamics tions; increasingly strict legal requirements that of decline. Th e work of and mem- squatters have had to meet to be legally allowed bers of the New Left within the to squat, such as the national law of 2010 mak- had a direct connection to Amsterdam, and to ing most squatting illegal; the new temporary neighborhood activists like those mentioned by tenure of “anti-squatting” allowed to landlords Jan H. who were committed in the 1960s and by the government; the lack of available vacant 1970s to universal access to aff ordable housing buildings to squat; and the increasing diffi culty in Amsterdam and elsewhere. However, the squatters experience in receiving unemploy- Dutch Labor Party’s exclusion from power since ment payments under new neoliberal condi- 1977 has pushed the party’s radical activists to- tions (Kadir 2014: 40). Th e number of squatters ward resignation or withdrawal from party pol- in Amsterdam has declined drastically since the itics altogether. 1980s. 34 | Don Nonini

C o n c l u s i o n construction to new rental housing, not owner- occupied housing (Nieboer and Gruis 2016: Th is article has reconstructed the history of the 278). making and unmaking of the housing com- However, neither the making nor unmaking mons of Amsterdam from the 1960s to the late of Amsterdam’s housing commons was peaceful 2000s, as the Netherlands and Amsterdam have nor were they easily subsumed by the broader undergone the radical shift from Fordist export- events of the Netherlands’ postwar political oriented industrial capitalism to a postindustrial economy. Th ese processes were confl ict-rid- fi nance- and service-based capitalism. Above all, den, shift ed between scalar levels, and were al- there was a transformation in the historical and ways impelled by actors exercising agency. Th e geographic relations between capitalists and la- making of the Amsterdam housing commons boring classes. Th ere was a shift from the cor- occurred not only because of changes on the poratist balance between industrial capital and national scale but also because of changes oc- industrial trade unions that prevailed from the curring in two intersecting “local” scales of ac- end of the war through the mid-1970s to the tion—the New Left movement within the Dutch dominance of fi nancial and rental capitalists Labor Party of the 1960s and 1970s, and the vis-à-vis service workers since then. in-the-buildings social movement of squatters Th is article demonstrates that as part of this in Amsterdam during the same period. Th ese transition by the early 1990s, fi nancial capi- movements intersected with and mutually rein- talists asserted their new power not only with forced each other in what Don Kalb and Herman respect to the working class of the Netherlands Tak (2005) have called a historical and geo- but also to the Dutch state and the state-subsi- graphic “critical junction” to transform not only dized housing associations. As the Dutch and the national state but also the municipal state in international fi nancial sector gained infl uence Amsterdam to support the making of its housing over the Dutch state, the capacity of the housing commons. associations to meet the new needs for social However, from the 1980s onward, as these rental housing within Amsterdam diminished, social movements declined and became less able as state subsidies and policy support for social to mobilize to protect the rights of renters, new rental housing were withdrawn under pressure social forces—conservative political party elites from fi nance capitalists. As a result, fi nance and and elites who managed fi nancial, media, design, rental capitalists could increasingly capture the and production-service corporations—came to use values that scarce housing constitutes for the have greater infl uence and began to attack the working population of Amsterdam, and convert institutional basis of the housing commons, the such use values into the exchange values that housing associations. Th e new managers within privately provided mortgages and fi nancing for these associations who became infl uential when new housing construction represent. these associations were fi nancially severed from A sign of the new power of fi nance capital the Dutch state have also played key roles in the was the complaint by the Dutch Association transformation. of Institutional Investors in 2007 fi led with the Incipient research on the urban housing com- against the Dutch government mons, and more broadly on urban commons, that claimed housing associations had an unfair within anthropology, sociology, geography, and competitive advantage over private investors related disciplines can be assessed in light of the because of state support of social housing, and theoretical model advanced in this article. Hu- there was the need to “level the playing fi eld” ron’s (2015: 963) study claims that defi ning fea- (Priemus and Gruis 2011). Th e Dutch govern- tures of housing commons are that they occur ment yielded to this demand with a new pol- in “saturated space” where people, alternative icy that limited its subsidies for social housing uses, and investments all converge and where Th eorizing the urban housing commons | 35 strangers come together. Both features as Hu- Although Kornberger and Borch’s (2015) in- ron characterizes them apply, but she does not sights into the relational and additive nature of defi ne them precisely enough. Th e fi rst feature (some) urban commons are salutary, they err she mentions characterizes broadly any feature when they assume that urban commons are al- of an urban landscape—whether a commons or ways non-subtractive. Urban commons in hous- not—while she fails to distinguish the collective ing, sanitary water, schools, and so forth rep- use values that a housing commons represent resent subtractive commons, where the more from the commodifi ed exchange values that one person uses of them the less are available fi nance and rent capitalists convert housing to others. Th is is evident throughout the strug- to—if, that is, there are no countervailing in- gles around Amsterdam’s housing commons: stitutions working over long periods of time to housing is a limited good. Th e use values drawn prevent them from doing so. from urban commons by city residents become As to the second feature, Huron provides the a challenge to Kornberger and Borch’s “atmo- valuable insight that as they build commons spherics” theory, which under scrutiny appears together, strangers become non-strangers, but increasingly vague: for example, use for whom, does not address the politics of social move- under what social constraints? Although they ments like the New Left or squatters’ movements write that “the urban commons is … strategi- that simultaneously brings strangers together cally produced … to achieve particular com- to share political values and experiences and mercial or political eff ects” (2015: 10), they makes them non-strangers as they mobilize to fail to distinguish capitalist market imperatives participate in broader eff orts to make access to from the needs people have to sustain them- a housing commons a universal right. selves in noncommodifi ed ways through kin- Bruun’s study of Danish housing coopera- ship, friendship, sexuality, community, church, tives provides another approach to the urban and so on, however locally defi ned. housing commons. Her argument about the im- Still, their insights about relational “atmo- portance of “open access” to housing as a funda- spheric” commons can extend the analysis un- mental democratic value (2015: 156) should be dertaken in this article. Subtractive commons noted. It appears to challenge the generalization like the housing commons make other non-sub- in the commons literature (e.g., Ostrom 1990) tractive commons possible, as when an aff ord- that the commons has been eroded when there able housing commons allows intellectuals and are no rules that exclude outsiders from using artists to more easily come together in collective it. But even in social democratic societies like cultural productions, and helps make possible Denmark and the Netherlands, limits on the the atmospheric “information-rich” clusters of inclusion of new “users” in housing commons services available to corporations in Amster- always exist—whether legal (only citizens, only dam’s Centrum (Soja 2000: 136). It is important registered city residents) or de facto (only those to realize, however, these additive commons of who can fi nd housing open for occupation, use values such as creative and technical knowl- others having to wait for an opening). Th ese re- edges and skills are valuable in their concentra- strictions always merit ethnographic study and tions in part because they are a locational gift to political scrutiny. Th e limited time horizon of capital. Th e skilled service workers who collec- Bruun’s ethnography provides little insight into tively produce them also compete with one an- the long-term political conditions that make other to provide their services to corporations open access to housing commons possible in in business, design, media, fi nance, and related Denmark or elsewhere. In contrast, the current services located within the city under increas- study has provided a theoretical and historical ingly precarious conditions. framework for the productive study of such As to studies of social movements and urban conditions. commons, this article points to serious theoret- 36 | Don Nonini ical shortcomings of their accounts of how ur- ban commons are made—and by implication, Don Nonini is Professor of anthropology at the unmade. In the case of the Amsterdam hous- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He ing commons, Fainstein’s (2010) argument that is the author of “Getting By”: Class and State the Amsterdam squatters’ movement by itself Formation among Chinese in Malaysia (Cornell brought about “just” housing in the city is seri- University Press, 2015), and editor of A Com- ously one-sided in its failure to pay attention to a panion to Urban Anthropology (Wiley-Blackwell, simultaneous eff ective social movement within 2014) and Th e Global Idea of “the Commons” the Dutch state and its governing party—the (Berghahn Books, 2007). New Left movement in the Dutch Labor Party. E-mail: [email protected] Th is failure is symptomatic of social movement studies of the urban commons that adopt a vol- untarist approach to social change, limit their Notes foci to “civil society,” and give insuffi cient atten- tion to pervasive processes of political economy 1. A “point system” set rents based on an apart- that channel and constrain the politics of actors ment’s use values—its area, the number of within and beyond the state. Such approaches rooms, and amenities. Th e point system ex- provide few insights about how urban com- tended beyond social housing to include the mons persist and are sustained, and even less private housing stock as for all rental units up to about the processes that unmake them when the maximum number of points equivalent to a very high rent of 1,085 Dutch guilders—a span routinization sets in and social movement mo- that covered the vast majority of units (Schuil- bilization declines. ing and Van der Veer 2004: 7; Uitermark 2012: 203). Acknowledgments

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