Action Alliance against Housing Shortage and Urban Degradation, Newsletter 158
“Rich people are looking for homes”
Condominiums are selling for over $200 million in New York.
https://de.manhattanmiami.com/manhattan/100-most-expensive-manhattan-properties-for-sale
In London, there was also a nice top price for a condo at 170 million euros
https://www.welt.de/finanzen/immobilien/article8966222/Teuerste-Wohnung-der-Welt-hat-neuen-Besitzer.html
In Paris, the international clientele has to put down 25 million for a city apartment. https://www.engelvoelkers.com/de/blog/immobilienwissen/markttrends/wohnimmobilienmarkt-paris-aufwaertstrend-der-immobilienpreise-setzt-sich-fort/
Mayor Reker, who promised to lead the city to top positions in all profitable areas when she took office, is distressed. The rich still can’t find a truly rich, world-class home in Cologne.
The rich are poorly off in Cologne. When a penthouse, one of four, on the 18th floor in the Kranhaus was put up for sale last December, it was described in the media as the most expensive apartment in Cologne. The prospective buyers had to be able to pay only 8 million euros. One floor below, two apartments were on offer for 4, 2 and 4.6 million euros respectively from the real estate company “Sotheby’s International Realty”, which also has a branch in Cologne.
https://www.bild.de/regional/koeln/koeln-aktuell/koeln-die-teuerste-wohnung-im-kranhaus-steht-zum-verkauf-82115270.bild.html
A free standing single family house in Marienburg is for only 3.390.000 euro to have.
On 21.October we want to help the really rich to find a really rich home. With the Pappnasen red-black we walk starting from 11: 11 o’clock by Marienburg and require the value of the properties there finally on world level to raise. How can it be that villas in the lime tree avenue and the park road stand empty for years? We demand that they be sold for at least tens of millions so that we no longer have to be ashamed in front of the world.
Wäm jehürt die Stadt? by Brings
But now it comes down to
who knows what he really wants!
Is it the people
or is it the money?
Who is the city, the city?
Who is the town, the town?
Are they the people
or is it the money?
Who is the city, the city?
What is the name of the town, the city?
Is it the people
or is it the money?
For one of them you are strong
and powerful as the cathedral!
History, splendor and glory
and ancient tradition!
For the other you are Babylon,
in which one can hide!
You always have a place for sinners
and can forgive like a mam!
But now it comes down to
who knows what really counts!
Is it the people
or is it the money?
Who is the city, the city?
Who is the town, the town?
Are they the people
or is it the money?
Who is the city, the city?
What is the name of the town, the city?
Is it the people
or is it the money?
Nothing is decided yet!
Everything is still in it!
We can still talk about it,
because we are the children, the people!
Who is the city, who is the city?
Who is the town, the town?
Is it the people
or is it the money?
Who is the city, the city?
What is the name of the town, the city?
Is it the people
or is it the money?
Who is the city, the city?
What is the name of the town, the city?
Is it the people
or is it the money?
Who is the city?
What is the name of our town?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJKWdWYolOA
For a society without evictions
On October 13 at 10:00 a.m. Reinhard is to be evicted from his apartment. We are in solidarity, we are loud because you are stealing Reinhard’s apartment.
Come on Friday, October 13 from 9:00 am in front of the house at Manteuffelstr. 63 in Kreuzberg. Bring your ideas how we welcome the bailiff who already evicted the Gülbol family 10 years ago.
We know that we are against the structural and real power of the state … in which housing is a commodity and the human right to housing depends on financial commitment, we know that this property is protected by the state and the police and their rights are enforced, even with the violence of the police, we know all this and that is exactly why we are sooo angry!
Because we are angry, we are loud, because they steal our future.
Here Reinhard is dispossessed – of his life, his future! There is no more affordable housing. Everything has been sold off and made fit for profits. What remains is the competition for the biggest profits. THAT WAS OUR CITY; THROW THE PROFIT VULTURES OUT AT LAST:
On Friday, October 6, starting at 6 p.m. in front of Reinhard’s house, we will show videos of protests against evictions in recent years.
Reinhard is 69 years old, lives in this apartment since 1979, of course in simple living standard. The house has long since been converted into condominiums and flogged off on the market as a high-priced commodity. Reinhard has long resisted its owner, Mrs. Hostermann. She is an architect and therefore also a professional. She knows what she is doing. We had already protested in front of her house. The neighbors
were horrified.
So were we! Therefore, let us express our anger together. We are not victims, we are the future!
Solidarity greetings
Alliance Prevent Eviction
taz Tenant from Kreuzberg defends himself against dismissal https://taz.de/!5961225/
nd: https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1176169.raeumungsklage-berlin-kreuzberg-der-letzte-altmieter-soll-auch-noch-raus.html
Berliner Zeitung: https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/zwangsraeumung-verhindern-ein-ganzes-haus-als-eigenbedarf-wahnsinn-li.386841
https://zwangsraeumungverhindern.nostate.net/
In memory of Heinrich Pachl by Martin Stankowski
Dear friends & relatives
in October our friend Heinrich Pachl would have turned 80, unfortunately he can no longer celebrate. But the Odeon
is showing two films by Heinrich to mark the occasion. “Ben Ruhr” from 1988, in which he travels and advises the region as a fictional image consultant. And the second film is “On the Backs of Tenants”.
We made this film together in 1986 on the history of the builder-owner model using the example of the Köln-Berg. The builder-owner model is a Cologne invention from the early 1970s, and the KölnBerg with its 1,300 apartments in Meschenich was the first large-scale attempt at this tax-saving model. At the time, this was a small clique of clever people – who still knows the names Renatus Rüger, Aman and Graebner and above all Jochem Erlemann. He was in jail for 8 years and we were able to film an interview with him while he was in prison about the methods and consequences of the builder-owner model, which caused the state to lose billions or put billions in the pockets of the wrong people. The film is almost 40 years old, but the topic of housing shortages and speculation is still relevant.
Both films Sunday October 8 at 11.30 in the Odeon, Severinstr. 81 and I also tell a little about the film and its background. Tickets at 313110 from 4pm or at the box office.
Authoritarian Urbanism
The news of the death of US historian and sociologist Mike Davis in June 2022 has also been sadly noted in German-language urban studies. Davis has been no stranger to this country since the 1990s, and his intelligent, impressively written books continue to give important impulses to emancipatory urban movements and analyses here.
In particular, his study City of Quartz: Excavations of the Future in Los Angeles, published in 1990 and in German in 1994, has contributed decisively to a critical discussion of post-Fordist and neoliberal urban development. The socio-spatial distortions described by Davis using the example of Los Angeles – such as the valorization and privatization of public space and its increasing surveillance and control – were (and still are) highly applicable to the critique of urban policy in this country.
City of Quartz and Davis’s later books Ecologies of Fear (1999) and Planet of the Slums (2007) are classics that have influenced generations of critical urban scholars. Remarkably, they have lost none of their analytical and linguistic power to this day and continue to prove immensely topical and inspiring.
All of this has prompted us to place City of Quartz and its influence on German-language urban research and movement at the center of a debate in our series “Altes neu gelesen. The introduction is the chapter “Fortress L.A.” (2006 [1990]), which we are able to republish here thanks to the kind permission of the publisher Assoziation A. Roger Keil, Rainer Wendling from the publisher Assoziation A in conversation with the editors of sub\urban, Stephan Lanz, Sina Brückner-Amin and Katja Schwaller comment on and discuss it.
This debate appeared on September 28, 2023, as a pre-publication of vol. 11, no. 3/4 (2023): Focus on Authoritarian Urbanism.
https://zeitschrift-suburban.de/sys/index.php/suburban/issue/view/54
We talk to Rainer Wendling about the publication of City of quartz, the reactions to it, and the influence of Mike Davis on urban political struggles and analyses in Germany.
https://zeitschrift-suburban.de/sys/index.php/suburban/article/view/903/1286
broadcasts, messages, news
Ten years ago, the Alliance to Prevent Evictions was founded in Berlin
https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1176703.berlin-gemeinsam-gegen-gentrifizierung-ein-teil-meiner-familie.html
The SPD rent freeze – a PR gag at the expense of tenants
https://www.rosalux.de/news/id/50994/der-spd-mietenstopp-ein-pr-gag-auf-kosten-der-mieterinnen
Apartments in Germany: Too few, but antisocial
Germany lacks hundreds of thousands of apartments, especially affordable ones. Questions and answers on the housing crisis.
https://taz.de/Wohnungen-in-Deutschland/!5960858/
Maybrit Illner’s talk show had the topic “No plan against housing shortage” on Sept. 28, 2023.
Starting from minute 36 Wibke Werner of the citizen of Berlin tenant association comes to word: With the housing summit in the Kanzleramt on 25.09.2023 the tenant protection did not occur.
https://www.zdf.de/politik/maybrit-illner/bauen-sanieren-mieten-kein-plan-gegen-wohnungsnot-maybrit-illner-vom-28-september-2023-100.html
Cologne’s office real estate market: “Painful adjustment process”
https://www.report-k.de/koelns-bueroimmobilienmarkt-schmerzhafter-anpassungsprozess/
Situation of homeless in Saarland to improve
https://www.sr.de/sr/home/nachrichten/politik_wirtschaft/runder_tisch_wohnungslosigkeit_100.html
The five-part https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/RC-024312/capital-b/ sets the scene in the last year of socialist Germany, when national turmoil and the dream of another GDR confronted each other. The latter was over with the SPD-commanded war in Mainzer Strasse in Friedrichshain. This was followed by the triumph of the construction mafia around Diepgen and Landowsky, who – interviewed here – show surprisingly little remorse and still spread their garbage about the cosmopolitan city they would have tried to build in the 90s. The fact that it was all about lining the pockets of certain people is made surprisingly clear.
https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/460232.nachschlag-der-gro%C3%9Fe-reibach.html
https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/RC-024312/capital-b/
Housing First in Finland
https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/114431-000-A/finnland-housing-first-gegen-obdachlosigkeit/
Dates
07.10.2023, 20:05 on Radio Köln the autonomous prison radio broadcasts an interview with Klaus Jünschke about the book “Gefangen & Wohnungslos”.
08.10.2023, 11:30 a.m., 2 films in memory of Heinrich Pachl, Odeon
10.10.2023 World Homeless Day https://www.worldhomelessday.org/
10.10.2023, 6 p.m., Reading by Janita-Marja Juvonen at SKF, Mauritiussteinweg 77-79.
https://einmal-absturz-und-zurück.de/
14.10.2023, from 12 p.m., 24 years Wagenplatz “Who owns the world”. Krefelder Strasse
17.10.2023, 7 p.m., Book presentation “Imprisoned & Homeless”, Karl Rahner Academy https://weissmann-verlag.de/
18.10.2023, 5 p.m., A visit to the Gerling Quarter
https://www.hda-koeln.de/kalender/230818_architektouren/
Oct. 18, 2023, 8 p.m., 5th Municipal Policy Forum at City Hall on “Housing Needs Cooperatives.” Register at Gruene-Fraktion@stadt-koeln.de
Oct. 19, 2023, 11:55 a.m., “For a social NRW” – rally from the state parliament https://www.freiewohlfahrtspflege-nrw.de/initiativen/kampagne-nrw-bleib-sozial/einfuehrung
19.10.2023, 19 o’clock, Zurich and its cooperative tradition u. Gemeinwohlorientierte Bodenordnung. https://www.hda-koeln.de/kalender/231019_msz/
23.09.2023, 17 – 19 o’clock, getting to know the community living project Petershof, Lövenicher way 9-11, https://petershof.org/
Oct. 21, 2023, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.,. Rich people looking for a home. Satirical demo on vacant villas in Marienburg, together with the Pappnasen rotschwarz.
29.10.2023, 3 p.m., Opening of the DRAUSSENSEITER exhibition, Alfred-Schütte-Allee 4
01.- 10.11.2023 Prison Days: homelessness/jail/homelessness https://www.aktionstage-gefaengnis.de/bundesweite-aktionen/aktionstage-2023/
10/26/2023, 3:30 p.m. Council
16.11.2023, 15:30 Social Committee
Dec. 5, 2023, 7 p.m., Werner Rügemer: Who owns my housing. Friedensbildungswerk
For a city without homelessness
For a city without evictions
For a city without drug deaths
For a city without violence against women and children
For a city without deportations
For a city without poverty
October 07, 2023
Klaus Jünschke and Rainer Kippe
https://wohnungsnot.koeln
PS
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Translated with DeepL
