- In today's capitalist society, workers are living increasingly exploited and precarious. In this precariousness, beyond the labor sphere, the issue of housing that has become an existential condition is one of the most urgent and disturbing.
In a context in which capitalism completely commercializes life, housing has gone from the extinction of the right to business, that is, to another commodity in the global market, which has gone from a basic need to almost a luxury good. In the capitalist system, housing is functional both for productive purposes (real estate speculation, rent of land...) and for reproductive purposes (reproduction of the workforce and of life). For the working class, on the other hand, housing is a basic necessity – a place where to develop the intimacy of life, a place where to live – but also a blackmail element. It is a good that unites us with the paid work chains: if we have no work, we have no housing!
This situation is further aggravated by the emergence of COVID-19 which, beyond being a health emergency, is a symptom of the structural crisis of the capitalist system (economic, political, social, civilizing, etc. ). ). With the health emergency, the misery of an increasingly proletarian working class has worsened: EREs and EREs, reductions in working hours, redundancies... Work and wages (i.e. being exploited) have become almost a privilege. In this situation, access to decent housing is becoming more and more difficult. The Spanish Government has taken a number of measures to deal with this emergency situation. These (although they insist that they are progressive) do not seem sufficient to us, as they are short-term and short-term. From the Housing Union of Vitoria-Gasteiz they have pointed out very well that the crumbs for today, the hunger for tomorrow. As evidenced by the fact that obtaining aid for bureaucratic obstacles is almost taxable, it is clear that these poquitos have not been allocated to us; they are ‘patches’ measures that have been created during this crisis so that the owners maintain the level of profits.
"There is another factor emerging in these first weeks of emergency: that the crisis is becoming an opportunity for the benefit of big speculators."
Moving this analysis to the Basque Country, we note that the expropriated classes are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their standard of living (and reproduction). Moreover, there is another factor that emerges in these first weeks of emergency: the crisis is becoming an opportunity for the benefit of big speculators. In recent weeks, the Blackstone and Azora vulture funds have purchased more than 1,000 homes in Vitoria-Gasteiz and Donostia-San Sebastián, according to Europa Press. Like all apocalyptic films, it also has its butcher vultures. In addition, and despite the fact that "evictions are paralyzed", there is still the eviction of people like the housing block of the Casco Viejo de Pamplona or the attempt to evict the released space Fires.
In the neighborhood in which we work and live, in the Casco Viejo de Bilbao, this new emergency joins the structural emergency that we have lived for a long time. This emergency structure is called gentrification and turistification. Thanks to these processes, our neighborhood has become an outdoor shopping center, in which our territory and our ways of life are other products to sell on the market. It is very clear to us that those who will take advantage of the "opportunities" that opened the health crisis are the same ones that sold our neighborhood in the gentrification market: big business owners, real estate companies and tourism companies; that they will continue to drive wild real estate speculation, the privatisation of public space and the commodification of our lives. And those of us who will continue to pay for the consequences will be ourselves: working-class neighbors, those of us who will be forced to leave our neighborhood because of the inability to pay for housing.
"We consider it essential to start reflecting on the need to activate the radical struggle for housing in our neighborhood and in other towns and neighborhoods"
To do this, start reflecting on the need to activate the radical struggle for housing in our neighborhood and in other towns/neighborhoods
We believe that it is essential (as the Rental, San Ignacio and the members of the Deusto Housing Union are already doing). In this sense, we consider that we do not start from scratch and that it would be interesting to observe the models of neighborhood unions and housing that are being organized in other cities such as Barcelona or Madrid: to understand the problem of housing as a gap for humanization and the logic of assistentialist and assistentialist
An anolation model that breaks with the institutionalist. Following these examples, start organizing to respond collectively to the material needs of those affected.
we need – in order to do so, using all the means and tools necessary to ensure that the neighbours do not have to leave the neighbourhood – by promoting the construction of a community based on self-organisation, solidarity and struggle.
It is imperative that all of us who are literally drowned by the rental bubble and those who develop the ideological struggle in the neighborhood realize that the only solution that remains for us is the struggle and the collective organization. We consider it necessary to politicize the housing problem. To do so, we propose to develop our two axes of work from the field of housing: neighborhood defense and neighborhood power; not to sectorize this struggle, but to respond to the problem of housing as a starting point for a more integral struggle. A struggle to build the neighborhood from the bottom, from the neighbors to the neighbors; a solidarity neighborhood that, moved by mutual care and collective struggle, exists and resists.