UN-HABITAT, the human settlements programme of the United Nations in Nairobi, organised for the first time, a meeting of the member States. A theme: the quality of life in cities where the Living is always more expensive.
“Housing is not a commodity, it is a human right!” Wherever the UN special Rapporteur for the human right to Housing occurs, never Leilani Farha gets tired to emphasize that governments, cities, municipalities and citizens need to take back the housing market. “Apartments and residential real estate are Big Business. From a Global perspective it is a business with a volume of 163 trillion US dollars. This is more than double the global gross domestic product!”, Farha made in a lecture in April 2018. Soon you will be to see in a new documentary by the Swedish journalists and producers Fredrik Gertten also in German cinemas. The Film with the title “Push” is created through Crowdfunding, and accompanied Leilani Farha on a journey around the world to document the global housing shortage.
Apartments as investment object
That less and less people can afford an apartment in the city, together with that flats and residential real estate investment objects. Banks, investment funds, pension funds and large private investors to buy residential property, renovate and the Rent increase: “This is the highest return that you can imagine. This is more valuable than Heroin”, says Jürgen Schramm. He is involved in the “surge of Cologne”, a cooperative for self-governing, social and ecological Living, and advises on new initiatives for community Building.
Protest banner against rent increases through Airbnb (in Palma): “The city for the residents”
His cooperative has been built on a former industrial site: a Multi-generational house of around 1000 square meters. Each family has its own apartment and all the shared rooms. After two years of work – with a high equity share – moved the families in the 3.5-million-dollar passive house. “Now we meet and cook together or watch TV or use the giant screen to watch a movie or football together. This is fun!”, Jürgen Schramm reported.
On top of that, the families live cheaper than in the other houses, which are built on the Clouth-site, in the district of Köln-Nippes. The extensive range of equity services to the property and has been able to build around a fifth cheaper than the construction companies, the rental part of social housing, in part – and property-built apartments on the site.
“The need to Finance it alone and we will Finance them. The cooperative has also ways to get other grants,” says Schramm. Especially: The cooperative may not make a Profit, so no one has to earn it. In twenty years, the Rent will hardly be higher than it is today.
Land for the city coffers
Jürgen Schramm missing, however, the active support of the town for such housing projects. Although Cologne is one of the German cities, in which “normal people” it is always harder to find an affordable apartment that is invested in Social or cooperative housing only a little. In the past few years, the city is building and houses has been sold to financial investors. The flushed significantly more money in the Cologne city Treasury, as if the land went to cooperatives or owners ‘ associations that want to live in it themselves.
Protest with Gippspuppen against rent increases (in Berlin): call for expropriation
“Behind the sharks stuck! Behind the companies that want to create nothing other than money”, writes Jürgen Schramm and refers to the protests that were triggered in Germany’s capital by investors, such as the “Deutsche Wohnen” with overpriced Rent.
There, in Berlin, was last updated and the call for the expropriation of large investors getting louder and louder, the protests against high Rents quickly spread also in other German cities.
Rents are rising faster than income
The rising Rents and housing prices in the cities, however, are not a German phenomenon. Worldwide, more and more people in the cities are pushing – and in the world, the living costs are rising faster than incomes. According to the OECD, the main reasons for the shrinking middle class. The international organization for economic cooperation and development warns that this will cause long-term impact on global economic growth.
“It is not a German Problem, it is a Problem of global dimensions that need to be resolved urgently,” says Gino Van Begin, Secretary General of ICLEI. This is a world-wide network of cities, municipalities and counties that have committed to the protection of the environment and sustainable development. “Affordable housing – or even sustainable housing, in particular, highlights the question of how we want to develop? We are talking about equitable development, in the people, or that is a development, where we only talk about the Rich and the poor?”
Homeless in Silicon Valley (2018): housing shortage as a global Problem
The Problem of the world’s rising Rents in the Metropolitan areas promotes the emergence of Slums, the so-called informal settlements, so Van Begin: “We must not forget that one billion people worldwide have no housing, they live in Slums.”
Cities as a key for development
Today, four billion people live globally, slightly more than every Second in a city – in the world. In the year 2050 will be two-thirds of the world’s population – which will rise according to UN projections, to 9.8 billion people.
The challenge of living for 6.5 billion people in the cities, is enormous – and not to be made by the cities themselves. The urbanization is a national and international task, says Van Begin. “The cities can and should not take on the responsibility of States,” he says. “But cities can play a very important role in order to promote these ideas of sustainable development. Ultimately, they are Closest to the people”.
Investors and governments are urged to
For the sustainable development of the cities also affordable housing, if the urban centres are not to be turned in social conflict zones. Already today, people go to the streets to demonstrate for the human right to Housing. It investments are needed to create affordable housing in the cities, but the current experience shows that there is no task that can be left to the market.
UN special Rapporteur Farha: “Housing is not a commodity”
UN special Rapporteur Farha wrote recently the world’s largest property investor, the group black stone, to make attention to the fact that its business practices violate the human rights.
Also, the governments of Denmark, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and the United States has written to Leilani Farha. In the letters, she draws attention to the fact that these countries have signed the Convention on human rights, the right to Housing, this right is, however, not to implement. It calls on governments, relevant changes in the law to initiate. Or, as you put it in your lecture of 2018: “If we want the human right to Live, we need comprehensive changes.” Apartments should be seen as a home and not as a capital, where people will invest, not in assets.