Oldenburg AfD councillor Andreas Paul has commented on our squat in an Instagram post. In addition to the expected condemnation of our protest, the right-wingers show in the statement that they do not represent a social “alternative”, but only want to run the normal capitalist state differently. Their concern is the “unhealthy” housing market, where there are too few (!) empty buildings. Our concern, on the other hand, is for the people who spend more and more of their lives working for the owners of houses and flats, or those who do not have any access to a personal living space because they do not have access to the (financial) means the systems asks for.
How does the AfD think the housing market will recover? Of course, by getting rid of building regulations, preferably those that are supposed to provide a little more climate protection. Once they are gone, “normal earners” will finally be able to afford to build again (after having paid money to a bank for at least 20 years, of course).
In fact, the reasons for the housing crisis are more complex. One reason is high land prices. Trading land on the market is obviously a very bad idea, because land does not simply multiply like other goods, e.g. chairs, when demand increases. So when a lot of money is invested in land, prices explode, which we have also seen in Oldenburg in the last few years. The solution would be not to trade land on the market, but to put it under democratic management.
The fact that construction times for building projects have actually become longer is also due to an overload in the construction industry. However, it is evident that the construction times for affordable housing have increased significantly more than those for profitable luxury new construction.
Moreover, those who respond to the housing crisis by saying “Build, build, build!” (i.e. with different emphases, everyone from parts of the Greens to the AfD) try to hide the fact that the market only creates offers for those who can raise enough money to meet their demand. So if it is more profitable to build ecologically damaging new luxury buildings for the well-off, while everyone else has problems paying their rent, the decision is made in favour of profit and thus new luxury buildings.
In Andreas Pauls’ world only the German petit bourgeois counts, who has to work his whole life for his own home, as it has to be in a capitalist class society. The AfD promises: Soon you will only have to work half your life to have a roof over your head, but the climate crisis will tear it down again. The interests of tenants are not even mentioned in this image, and housing corporations and landlords even less so. How long did the owners of housing companies like Vonovia work for their flats?
We want to show that it doesn’t have to be like that. No to the housing market and the madness of vacancies and homelessness it creates, and no to profit and rent debts, no to new luxury buildings and decaying blocks of flats. The housing crisis will only be solved when buildings are not used to make more money, but so that people can live well, happily and healthily. But all this will only be possible if we take the flats and houses out of the market and thus out of the hands of capital. A world of cooperation and solidarity is possible!
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