3Cs weblog

The new housing rights movement:

We already commented on the difficulty of finding an apartment for rent in Madrid. The prices have sky-rocketed repeatedly in recent years. There’s a ton of financial speculation going on and a lot of it is tied in with politicians trying to make a buck off of gentrification- thus the politicians will help change zoning laws or the qualification of lands (as in from “industrial land” to “urbanizable land”) to build luxury apartments. In the last post on this we mentioned how this is leading to a huge degree of inaccessibility of housing especially for young folks facing precarious labor conditions. The UN commissioner on housing, in a recent trip to Spain actually denounced the situation and the degree of urban speculation.

There are a whole series of factors going in to this situation. We don’t know enough yet to explain in any detail- a lot of factors tie in- including the change to the Euro, the freeing up of real estate markets, the very thin market for renting apartments, local political corruption, etc. All this has resulted in some very weird factors such as: this generation in Spain is the one that will take the longest to be able to leave their parents’ house (partly due to these high housing costs and temp jobs, thus you see 30-somethings living at their parents’ place- couples putting marriages and children on hold, etc.- thought this isn’t only b/c of the housing situation it is exacerbating it). Also, apparently Spain (or maybe its specifically Madrid) currently has the most expensive housing costs as compared to local salaries in the world second only to Japan (or maybe just Tokyo- we’ll try and verify)- i.e. the percentage of earnings being destined to mortgage payments, rent, etc.

In the past year this situation has given rise to a very interesting movement for access to housing. Although it is becoming increasingly complex and many actors are getting involved what is interesting is the spontaneity of the movement’s emergence. Rather than particular organizations, unions, community groups, well-defined activist networks taking on the issue- it was much more informal in its beginnings. Most people seem to define it as coming from a series of discussions in internet chat rooms, SMS messages, and blog posts. Several sit-ins were called for and grew in size regularly leading to the formation of the Assembly against Precarity and for Housing with Dignity (another large platform is called just Housing with Dignity but this made up much more of already pre-defined social movement and community groups).

Many who began participating here are not life-long militants but people who got active on this issue in particular. The other interesting factor is how precarity is tied in- both labor precarity but also what someone from the assembly mentioned as “precarity of rights” that is currently being forced on people.

Much of the movement has grabbed onto the “V” for vendetta symbol. The one from the blockbuster movie with a circled “V”. The movie’s logo has been appropriated by many in this city and you can see the graffiti all over our neighborhood. This is because the word for housing (vivienda) also starts with a V so the movement is sometimes referred to as the V for Vivienda movement. We’re attaching some photos here of the graffiti. Around carnival there were a bunch of folks (including us for a while) dressed up in the movie’s costumes as a way to get the word out about the housing movement. This March 24th there are going to be a series of national demonstrations about this issue. We’ll keep you posted.

P.S. please send word around about this movement- we’ve heard that folks here are looking to contact other housing rights groups internationally.

We’re including a link here that describes some more about the movement in English (has some errors, oh well) as well as couple of links to some of the platforms that are emerging

Introduction to Housing Movement in English

http://www.euromovements.info/yearbook/index.php/Housing_movement_in_the_Spanish_State

Movement platforms

http://www.vdevivienda.net/

http://www.viviendadigna.org/