2 European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City 3 INTRODUCTION fter 25 years, for the first time real estate managers, asset dealers and city Asellers have not been alone at this year’s global property party “Mipim” in Cannes. The European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City, together with protesters from the region, have also been there. At our “Anti Mipim Tribunal” we presented cases from 12 countries which showed some of the consequences of the business which was celebrated at the Mipim. We accused of concrete business actors and local authorities for violating the right to the city. We stressed that these violations are not isolated cases but that they in Cannes alongside the annual are necessary parts of a structural MIPIM event – the international process of commodification, market for real estate professionals, privatisation, financialisation and real which also calls itself the world’s estate speculation. We demonstrated property show… These cases why this profit-orientated business illustrate and are paradigmatic of should be replaced urgently by what is happening to our homes and alternatives that are orientated on the our cities, what is actually the type of right of everybody to a have secure, business that is prepared and sold adequate, guided by the everyone’s at MIPIM, whose mechanisms and right to a healthy, non-segregating social and economic consequences and affordable place to live. And we must be shown to and analysed by started to discuss HOW “Mipimism” society, in its mechanisms, as well as – which is another word for the social and economic consequences neoliberal ideology of real estate of it. In addition to the specific cases capitalism – really can be stopped of the various European cities, the and can effectively overcome. first chapter is the final statement that results from collective analysis This publication aims at of the movements of the European presenting the different cases Alliance on Mipimism, its critique that were introduced by social and alternatives. movements and organizations at the European Action in the “Anti The European Action Coalition Mipim Tribunal” which was held for the Right to Housing and 4 elsewhere took action to demand lower rents, the end of all evictions, especially those driven by real estate speculators, the State and the Troika, the construction of adequate levels of social housing, and to demand an end to the overwhelming debt burden that has been placed on ordinary citizens, mass housing and the public budgets. Globalised financial markets and profit-oriented transnational corporations are controlling large sections of land, buildings and the housing stock in many European countries. It is our strongly held view that across Europe housing must be based on the needs and rights of people and the City is made up of a diverse not those of profit. range of groups, organisations and social movements and originated In order to meet the local from meetings held in Germany housing needs it is necessary that and in Greece in 2013. We say new housing construction and STOP to the misery caused by a significant part of the existing speculation, financialisation and housing stock in all towns and austerity measures. We want to cities of Europe, as well as housing promote an ethical and just approach finance and land, are excluded whereby housing is a human right from markets and organised under and a human necessity and all a direct public and decentralised people without discrimination, have democratic control. real access to the cities in which they live. At the same time all tenants, mortgage payers/holders, dwellers October the 19th we prepared and homeless across Europe time, the European Day of Action for The by international law must have Right to Housing and the City. enforceable rights, which guarantee Groups from various European ciities common standards for the security came together: Amsterdam, Athens, of tenure, affordability, accessibility, Berlin, Budapest, Dublin, Geneva, construction quality, democratic Lisbon, Lorient, Malaga, Paris, participation and fairness. Poznan, Rhine-Ruhr region, Rome, Rouen, Warsaw and groups from March 2014 European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City 5 6 SUMMARY INTRODUCTION 4 STATEMENT 8 ACCUSATIONS 16 Habitat et Participation 17 Radical Housing Network 19 Droit au Logement 25 MieterInnenverein Witten u. Habitat Netz e.V. Witten, Ruhr 33 Encounter Athens 41 European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City 49 Unione Inquilini 51 Bond Precaire Woonvormen 53 Habita - Colectivo pelo Direito à Habitação e à Cidade 63 Plataforma Afectados por las Hipotecas 67 Istanbul Urban Movements 71 Team Cover and graphic design: Levi Olivares Illustration: Jorge Costa Proofreading: Pedro Ferreira Print work: Opusculo Artes Gráficas | The European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City [email protected] We will have a website soon you can also have information on www.reclaiming-spaces.org European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City 7 STATEMENT STATEMENT BY THE EUROPEAN ACTION COALITION FOR THE RIGHT TO HOUSING AND TO THE CITY 25 YEARS OF MIPIMISM IS ENOUGH! uring the past 25 years some become private, purely financial, of us have been promised assets! NO to their reduction of private homes, but all we the city, our common habitat, to a Dgot is debt and the threat of evic- globally competing business place, tion. Others paid rising rents, and filled only with commodities! NO to what we got is a lack of mainte- the plundering of our environments nance, and gentrification. Many and the urban heritage of humanity! have been pushed out of our neigh- NO to their workfare, precarisation bourhoods; others are homeless or and control of the inhabitants! NO to badly housed. During the past 25 their speculative banking systems years much financial investment and their strategies to force us into has come through our cities, but at debt! NO to the public bailout of the end the vast majority of us are their crisis, their crashes! NO to poorer. In the view of the financial their systems of greed, structural investors we, the producers of their irresponsibility and profit extraction! buildings, the inhabitants of their assets play only one role: We shall pay for their business and loans; be LOOK BACK IN ANGER it as tenants, as mortgage payers When the first Mipim took place or as citizens and tax payers. Now, 25 years ago the crisis of the ford- after 25 years of mortgage-induced istic “factory society” with its mass human disasters, after all the misery housing machines was already 20 produced by privatisations, after years old. In reaction to that crisis all the losses for our communities, the neoliberal ideology of homeown- after all the economic crashes and ership has been normalised and the after all the huge socialisation of the “right to buy” progressively replaced costs it is really time to say “NO” to the right to equal housing rights. this business. NO to their destructive In 1989 the time was ripe for ideas of a total market, where hous- the lift-off of the property business es and other social infrastructure from its territorial relations and the 8 freeing from its role as a mere ser- Much of this capital was invest- vice for industrial production and ed into housing and commercial social reproduction. The real estate real estate, making living in the business became an “industry” in European major cities more and its own right. more unaffordable. Tourism, urban entertainment, the concentration of As Mipim was one of the main retail, mega-events and large scale events promoting this development, urban projects transformed many we may call the corresponding ide- city regions into agglomerations of ology and practice “Mipimism”. The transnational property investments. Mipim since 25 years has been cel- ebrating the crimes of financialised At the same time financial ac- property speculation by organising cumulation and new technologies an annual spectacle for the rich and of shadow banking promoted the their servants with business talks on development of huge transnational yachts and streams of Champagne. mortgage and housing bubbles. The crashes since 2007, the public “Mipimism” is the cynical cele- bailouts, the fundamental crisis of bration of the systematic disposes- the EU and the mortgage misery sion of the majority of inhabitants in southern Europe during the past from their right to the city by a mi- years… All this is the consequence nority of global real estate managers of 25 years of Mipimism. and investors. Mipimism from its beginning was DIAGNOSIS OF THE RESULTS warmly welcomed by market-driven Let’s have a look at the latest re- governments in Europe. Germany sults, as they appear to the members for instance, after a long political of our European Action Coalition: In disputes, in 1989 abolished a law Southern Europe and Ireland the which protected the huge sector “Troika” (European Commission, Eu- of not-for-profit rental housing from ropean Central Bank, IMF) reacted to being sold off. Soon afterwards the the debt crisis with conditions which iron curtain fell and Eastern Europe fundamentally attack the housing became an El Dorado for privatisers rights of ordinary people. Instead and speculators. At the same time of liberating the real use-value of the enlarging European Union moved the (i.e. foreclosed) housing stocks in the direction of neoliberal market from financial abuse and bankrupt- policies without a counterpart in cy by transforming it into social, social rights and equality. Step by public or common housing, the step, all barriers for the free flow of Troika enforced a bailout of the failed globally accumulated and heavily mortgage banks without protecting concentrated capital were abolished.