Category: Materials in English

European Manifesto for Public Housing

We, members of European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City affirm: housing is a human right, not a commodity!
But in capitalism, housing became a commodity and a financial asset. International institutions claim that the current housing crises should be solved by the market and by more deregulation in the domain of housing. Neoliberal policies insist that public money should be invested in the production of housing by the private sector. But real estate developments make high profits for the investors and banks, and don’t serve people’s housing needs.
Thus, we demand: Public money for public housing – Public housing from public money!

CALL UPON CANDIDATES RUNNING FOR THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: Public social housing! Priority of the European Parliament Agenda for 2019-2023

SUPPORT THE ADOPTION OF A EUROPEAN HOUSING STRATEGY THAT ALLOWS FOR AND ALSO REQUIRES THAT MEMBER STATES

  • REGULATE REAL ESTATE BUSINESS FOR THE BENEFIT OF PUBLIC GOOD,
  • SUPPORT THE PRODUCTION OF PUBLIC SOCIAL HOUSING AND OTHER TYPES OF NOT-FOR-PROFIT HOUSING,

IN ORDER TO ENSURE UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO ADEQUATE HOUSING IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO HOUSING

download our call upon candidates and future decision makers

#Allforprofit: The negative impact of World Bank involvement in the politics of housing in Romania

#Allforprofit: The negative impact of World Bank involvement in the politics of housing in Romania

Position paper of the Block for Housing (Blocul pentru Locuire)

I. The Block for Housing is critical towards the 2018 edition of the Bucharest “Housing Forum” and the housing policy proposals presented there.

II. The WB contribution to privatization, commodification and housing precariousness in post-socialist Romania

III. Main shortcomings of the WB Forum Proposal

IV. The perspective of the Block for Housing on the need for public housing

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Transformations of housing provision in Romania: Organizations of subtle violence

by Ioana Florea and Mihail Dumitriu

originally published in LeftEast

This article is based on empirical data and is a small part of an ongoing research project on housing struggles and transformations in housing policies in Romania. We look at these transformations within the wider historical and economic context, outlining some of the links between privatization and austerity measures, individualization and privatization of housing provision, and the role of NGOs as subtle facilitators of such (often violent) processes.

Waves of housing policy in the context of “transition”

In Romania, as in other ECE countries, “the implementation of housing reform became one of the first acts” of the post-89 governments, with “privatization, deregulation, and cuts in state funding” as its main principles (Stanilov 2007, p. 177). Scholars of post-socialism have shown that these policies were cemented by the influence of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF overseeing the entire “transition” process (Pichler-Milanovic, 2001, apud Stanilov 2007, p. 176). In 1990, 30% of the housing stock was state owned (Vincze, 2017) – including buildings constructed during socialism (especially blocks of flats) but also buildings nationalized in the 1950s from the richer strata (especially villas, mansions, and small apartment blocks). After 1990, the housing reform followed three main paths:

  1. The rapid and continuous sale of the state owned stock, which today stands at less than two percent of the country’s housing stock.
  2. The deregulation and persisting lack of regulations with regard to urban development, working as a form of support for the private real-estate sector. In the mid 2000s, the retreating state informally shifted the responsibility for drafting urban regulations to the private sector (a process sometimes legitimized as participatory working group practice). This opened new legal doors for private accumulation through dispossession.
  3. Re-privatization through restitutions (to former pre-1950 owners, their heirs, or their legal rights-buyers) of the nationalized housing stock, at first through financial compensation (for inhabited buildings) and in-kind (for unused buildings), and then through in-kind complete restitutions of buildings (despite the fact the state tenants were still living there and no relocation solution was envisaged).

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