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Mayor of Poznan: At the moment there are
two revitalization programs being introduced,
and we're thinking about a third one.
I didn't sign any documents
saying that I would move in here. So they decided to move me.
I had two days to move.
Moving people out
is one of the methods of these programs.
I understand that those people are not happy about it,
but the question is, why are they being moved?
When we talk about gentrification we talk about displacement.
It is because they are having conflicts with their neighbours.
They said they didn't want any tenants.
They want to evict us.
I also got evicted.
They portray us as mental people,
as part of some pathological environment or what.
Should people who destroy certain areas
be given substitute housing?
They should get temporary housing of low standard.
We should get rid of them.
THE BOURGEOISIE RETURNS TO THE CENTER
In recent years the neglected city centers are beginning to change.
Old, neglected buildings are demolished or converted into luxury apartments.
A flat in the center becomes a privilege for the rich.
Those who are not able to meet
the financial requirements of the market
are expelled, together with the debris of their renovated houses,
to the distant periphery. This happens to create favorable
conditions for investors and a particular group of their customers,
while the needs of other city dwellers are ignored.
In order to adjust the centers to the requirements of capital the
property deemed valuable is renovated and the poor are displaced.
The bourgeoisie reconquers the city centers
-- the process of gentrification begins.
I lived on Szewska street since 1997,
and in 2004 I moved here because there was no water for three months
and I got a notice to move out.
The landlord didn't want any tenants and told us to move out.
I said, that I have nowhere else to go,
but they told me they wouldn't wait until I get social housing.
Poultry Processing Company
The judge said I should stay as long as it took to get another flat.
On Starolecka the conditions are bad. There is no running water,
no toilet. We have to bring everything from the corridor.
We wash ourselves in plastic bowls.
People from the housing department came
and told me they would write to mayor Grobelny
that I should get a new flat.
I waited for a month
and then I got a reply
that I would NOT get a new flat.
I waited for a flat for 10 years
and I got nothing.
The mayor rejected the case.
David Harvey - City University, New York:
Sometimes it is an individual process that rich families
like a location and move in one by one, in other cases
it is real estate developers who move in and decide: This is
a good location, we want the poor people out. So there are various
ways in which gentrification can occur. Who wins? Well, it means the
well-off get into a much better location than they would have otherwise been in,
and the poor people are forced out and made to live somewhere else,
usually a long way away and in inferior circumstances.
"LAZARZ - Revitalization District" - There used to be military barracks
here. The premises were sold to developers,
and they built one of the most exclusive housing estates
of Poznan.
Workers' Initiative: On the other side of Ulanska St. is Lazarz,
one of the three working class districts in Poznan:
Debiec, Wilda and Lazarz.
The construction of houses for the rich in
working class districts is significant, and it
puts pressure on the inhabitants of this part of the city.
More and more buildings are renovated,
new flats are built,
and they are meant for wealthier people.
The changes in this part of the city
put pressure on the poor parts,
causing rent increases
and rising prices of products such as food there.
The rent has risen by 20 to 30 percent recently.
I've lived here for about 50 years,
and I was forced to move to a cooperative flat
with two rooms on Kopernika estate.
I used to pay 370 PLN (95 Euros), now I pay 470 zl (120 Euros).
It is a one-room-flat,
and it got much more expensive in a short time.
What was supposed to be a revitalization
is getting complicated and making things worse.
Since they renovated the front of the house
and the staircase,
I felt the financial consequences.
This part was built in the early 20th century by Germans,
then the buildings were made municipal,
and mainly workers' families lived here.
The flats were rented out by the local state.
Most of the families here were never wealthy,
and now, thanks to the revitalization program,
they are being moved out of these rather exclusive looking
and architecturally attractive tenement houses.
The city authorities are introducing a new plan
called revitalization,
but in fact it is a gentrification plan.
Poorer people will move out and richer will move in.
Many shops that had been here for years are now shut down,
they will probably be rented to banks.
People don't have money to live,
they don't have jobs,
so they look for something else.
But here are only banks.
There are more and more banks and neon lights.
It is frustrating.
Glogowska street should be called Bank street.
There is nothing interesting here.
You can't let the children outside,
they play on the market square,
there are no playgrounds here.
When I moved here
there were plenty of shops on Glogowska street
that don't exist anymore. They were replaced by banks.
Andrej Holm: Gentrification is mainly a conflict about modernization and rent increases.
When this process is started many working class people and a part of the pioneers
don't have enough money to pay the rent and have to leave. They have to pay
a big part of their income for housing. So gentrification produces displacement.
I think this is the main social conflict of gentrification. In other words,
gentrification lifts life-quality in the neighborhood, but the displacement of the
poor means that only the richer people can make use of this higher living standard.
PRIVATE PROPERTY - NO ENTRY
"SRODKA - Revitalization District" - It all started when
this bridge was built. After that,
the people who bought flats in the area have been doing
whatever they want.
80 percent of the people here have to leave.
We were sold by the first owner,
and we are in conflict with the second owner
because he's increasing the rent all the time.
From February 1st my rent will be 55 PLN (13 Euros) per square meter.
He said that we should leave the flat.
I didn't leave
because I think the rent increase was illegal.
In the meantime he switched off the gas
while it was minus 16 degrees outside.
I was threatened because I had debts
and I did not pay back enough.
Finally I was sued, and now the third court case is still going on.
The project of revitalising Srodka is done at our cost.
We are thrown out while new people are moved in.
Are we different?
I do not think so!
Krzysztof Herbst, Warsaw Social Strategy-group: Nobody acknowledges
that we should be afraid of and careful about gentrification.
People forget that revitalization
does not simply mean renovating some part of the city
but also bringing life back to it,
and that life should be brought back to the people already there.
The problem starts when it turns out
that people are being thrown out,
when the poorer people are being deprived of affordable housing.
In some cities,
these policies resulted in a lack of service workers,
because workers were forced to live far away from the city center
so that they weren't able to commute to work.
So the city suffered
from a lack of workers in the service industry!
These tenement houses are empty.
Opposite there are only two or four flats occupied,
the rest has been empty for many years.
I bought two rooms with a kitchen on Kolejowa street,
but a family inherited the house from
their aunts and uncles, and reclaimed the ownership.
They harassed the tenants.
We cried together.
Everybody moved out.
Some people buy tenement houses,
and then they increase the rent so much
that even if tenants don't want to, they still have to leave.
The city and capital get together and want another development strategy.
One development strategy is to try to bring in an affluent population,
good consumers, to bring in new people who are in the service sector,
who are actively involved in innovations, the media, art, and the rest of it.
So the city starts to have a strategy of saying:
We want to get a different population in here, and that
population which used to found the city is of no use to us anymore.
We want to try to bring another group of people.
"POWISLE - Warsaw district that is revitalized"
We are in the Powisle district of Warsaw.
The neighborhood has been changing a lot recently.
It used to be an industrial district with a lot of factories.
There were heating and power plants here.
Most of those plants went bankrupt,
and their premises were bought by developers
who replaced the old factories
with exclusive blocks of flats and office buildings. They
will be very expensive, even for Warsaw's realty standards,
costing dozens of thousands of Zlotys.
Left Alternative: For example, at the place of a
nearby candy factory,
the developer is building a block of flats
with an average price per square meter
of around 20,000 PLN (5,000 Euros).
In many cases,
changes in run-down neighborhoods are initiated by artists.
Their cultural activity can increase
the attractiveness of a district.
They often act as colonizers,
starting the first phase of gentrification.
They are followed by more affluent people
who are willing to pay a higher price
for an apartment in an artistic environment.
Existing residents are forced to adjust
to the rising prices
and foreign cultural trends.
Otherwise they must leave the district.
This place here
is an interesting example,
illustrating the gentrification process and
the typical cycle of changes of the urban space.
After the collapse of the industry, in the space
where there used to be workshops
and factories producing different things,
new places promoting culture and entertainment
start to appear,
and after that they are replaced by developers
who build exclusive blocks of flats.
At the moment, those clubs still exist,
but it has been known for several years now
that developers will build new houses here.
In the last two weeks one of the clubs
was set on fire by unknown persons.
It's just a suspicion,
but, I think, there is a connection between the
fire and the plan to build new apartments here.
Property values increase
in the district
producing higher profits for investors
and private owners.
Over time,
the artists themselves are not able to
pay the rising costs of living
and leave the district.
In this way they become victims of the very same
process they unconsciously initiated.
Here, together with a group of friends,
we run a tenement house,
a club, a workshop, a gallery...
It's called 5-10-15 and it is situated in Warsaw,
on the corner of Hoza St. and Mokotowska St.
The house and the yard are
situated in the city centre.
We rented the house from a private investor
and signed a contract for three months.
We were able to prolong it once.
The place became legendary,
since it's known as a spot you must see in Warsaw.
Ordinary people used to live here.
Ms Wanda lived here,
she visited us several times.
Her rooms are on the second floor.
This was a normal tenement building.
A year and a half ago two people still lived here.
The takeover of this place by the developer
is clearly a symptom of gentrification.
The same thing happens in the Praga district.
It all started in early June,
although it was supposed to open in mid-May,
and we will leave this place in early October.
That means the whole thing will be open for 5 months.
Many people are removed
within a week, a month or even overnight.
We had three months for that.
We have been trying to to get a place from the
city government that will be ours,
not just for a while but at least for a few years.
Word is going around that that there will be such place
in the center, since someone took over a tenement house.
I was looking for a place for a bike workshop,
but in most places the owners
were just about to take it over.
Warsaw Tenants' Association: In this country we have
seen the systematic limiting of tenants' rights,
of protection against evictions and against rent increases.
All these policies
were introduced by the first governments
just after the political transformation began [1989].
They led to the present
gigantic housing problems.
These problems are mostly connected to the fact
that the market itself
doesn't provide housing for everyone.
It only offers expensive housing that is
not affordable for average or low income workers.
So there is no alternative for them,
and the market doesn't offer anything,
apart from a long-term loan
for thirty years.
The loans have very strict requirements
concerning the education status, income, and age.
So we have a big group of tenants
that is not included in this market sector,
people who want housing
but can't take out a loan, and can't
afford the rent, and
neither the city nor developers
can offer them anything else.
We end up in a situation
where there's a huge need for housing.
This deficit is estimated at around one million
homes. That's how many of them would have to be built
in order to satisfy the housing needs in Poland.
At the same time,
there's a decrease of municipal housing,
and it all sums up to a housing crisis.
I am homeless
because I only get 230 PLN (60 Euros) to survive.
I worked for a long time.
I worked on construction sites.
I was supposed to have my leg amputated,
and that's why all things got complicated.
There's poverty, and it's not pleasant.
The number of citizens
with eviction orders is still growing.
Over the past 15 years
approximately 500,000 eviction orders concerning about
1.5 million people were filed in the courts.
At the same time about 400,000 people
were expelled from their homes by bailiffs.
In some towns the evicted people are moved to shacks and
containers located on the outskirts of the cities.
In nearly 40% of evictions the people are thrown out onto
the streets, and they have no right to get social housing.
It also happens that private landlords
throw out tenants without court decisions.
Warsaw Tenants' Association: I was born and lived here
all my life, 50 years, in the tenement house on Nowy Swiat 66.
In 2000 the ownership changed to the heir of the former owner.
The standard procedure started,
and the rent was raised from 7 PLN, to 9, 11, 27, 30 PLN
and finally 51 PLN (13 Euros) per square meter.
The calculation is easy:
For my 67-square-meter flat the rent would be
3,800 PLN (990 Euros). We could not say a word about that.
The owner started an eviction trial for all the tenants.
There were six families here at the time.
We all got evicted in accordance with the law.
Warsaw Tenants' Association: In 2003 I was informed that I can't
rent this house anymore. The eviction trial happened in 2006.
I appealed, but the court decided that I should be evicted
and get a welfare flat. I appealed again.
To this day I am waiting for a trial
in the court of appeals.
Warsaw Tenants' Association: In 2007 we found out
that the house was taken over by private owners.
We were shocked,
as the city owns 4 out of 12 shares of the house.
It promises a lot, but does nothing.
We found out that the private owners
don't want to talk to the city.
The rent rises started,
in the meantime, the private owners
began threatening and harassing the tenants.
All these processes lead to changes in the
supply of housing
in the central neighbourhoods of Warsaw.
Private owners come in,
and after throwing the tenants out,
they turn living spaces into business premises.
So all these social, eviction and rent issues
are strongly connected to the process of gentrification.
It's a local version of gentrification
driven less by artists or revitalization programs
but more by private owners.
You go out to walk the dog
and you find a notice that you can't live here anymore because
the house is no longer owned by the municipality but privately.
It turns out that they bought the shares on bargain prices from
elderly people who didn't have the strength to fight with them.
They increase the rent so that we aren't able to pay it
and then we're evicted. The house is sold
and it's all business.
City administrations often support gentrification. The developers
like it because it is big business and they make profit out of it.
So there are many groups that can benefit from gentrification.
What we would be concerned about however is what happens to the poor,
vulnerable, often marginalized populations that get forced out of these locations.
After the verdict of the appeal court
I received a document
in which the bailiff informed me that
on January 21st I would be evicted
and moved temporarily to a
workers' dormitory on Ordona Street.
I went there to see it.
Anyone can go and see the conditions over there.
They are typical workers' containers
which are rented to seasonal workers
working on construction sites.
In spite of the growing number of people for whom
having a roof over their heads is the main problem,
expenditures on public housing
are continuously reduced.
The construction of sufficient public housing
would lead to an overall decline in apartment prices.
This would improve the situation of a large number of people.
The authorities, however,
want private investors to deal with this problem.
Housing prices are rising.
The free market, combined with a policy favoring landlords,
rather deepens than solves the housing problems
of a large part of the urban population.
I work as a ward maid for Impel,
at the hospital on Polna St.
I have a temporary work contract.
It's not a stable job, and I can lose it at any moment.
Workers' Initiative: People employed as temporary workers
don't have a regular income.
At times they are unemployed.
As a result they can't pay the rent regularly,
they have debts and can be evicted.
We haven't been paying rent since April 2009
because my husband lost his job.
The plant was closed,
and there were mass dismissals.
Since then it's been really hard for us.
There was a time when neither of us had a job
and so we were merely surviving.
We went to the Social Service.
They gave us 200 PLN (50 Euros) a month,
and that's all we had to live on for the whole month.
This was last year, in 2009.
Then the problems with the flat started.
We didn't pay rent
because we didn't have money.
After half a year I got a job,
but I earn only 1,000 PLN (250 Euros).
The rent is 1,035 PLN (260 Euros).
It's my whole salary.
I live in public housing.
The flat is in terrible condition,
it should be renovated.
This is how they did the roof, everything fell off here.
We live in these ruins.
They tell me to pay 1,035 PLN (260 Euros).
For what?
First, they should renovate this flat.
The city didn't help me,
they only worsened the situation.
We asked the housing department
to reduce our rent,
but they denied.
We applied for a welfare flat,
but they also denied that.
They told us that we have a place to live.
And now they want to evict us.
The increasing rent is used by the city authorities
to segregate the people in the city,
to remove people from certain areas,
and to control the workers
and move them from one company to another.
Those who change jobs often and work in various factories
are easy targets for rent increases
since they can be forced to work harder and do overtime
in order to pay the rent.
I am a person who earns an average salary,
and I want an average flat
for a rent between 20 and 30 percent of my income,
like in Western Europe.
But here the income doesn't even cover the rent!
How are we supposed to pay such a high rent? How?
Anarchist Federation: Solving the housing problem through
the free market means, at least, triple robbery.
We are robbed by the developer
who sells the flat for a price that's too high;
we are robbed by the banker who sells us the loan
with high interest
that we have to pay off forever;
and then we are robbed by our boss
who earns more money on our work
than we get from him.
My pension is 1,200 PLN (300 Euros).
I have already spent all the money for next month.
All my bills amount to 800 PLN (200 Euros),
and I have a home mortgage loan.
I have already paid off the loan
but I still have to pay off 60,000 PLN (15,000 Euros) of interest.
It's impossible to repay.
A thirty-year-old person who takes out a loan for thirty years
spends all his or her life working to pay off the loan.
What if they lose their job?
They will lose their flat but they will have to pay off the loan.
Is life all about paying off loans?
If our children have their own flats,
we don't need our flat after we die,
so somebody else could live there.
My neighbour stayed in her flat,
because it turned out that they have no right to evict her.
But the conditions were "great". The owner hired
security guards, and anyone visiting them was checked
as they came in and out.
It was complete surveillance.
What's more,
the tenants had to pay for that security.
When I moved out,
my debt was about 100,000 PLN (25,000 Euros).
The neighbour who moved out after me
has a 180,000 PLN (45,000 Euros) debt,
including the security that I've mentioned.
In the current situation
a home is a kind of privilege.
If we change the perspective
and we say that housing should be everyone's right,
that a roof over one's head is a thing
that should be provided to all the inhabitants of the city,
to all people who belong to certain social groups,
groups that live within a certain urban space,
then a flat becomes something that we all deserve,
something that everyone owns.
It isn't an element of control.
It's not used to control large social groups.
It's not a tool to divide certain social groups
through making it easier
for some to gain ownership of homes
and thereby making it more difficult
for others to get housing.
In other districts people had the possibility to buy out
their apartments. In Nowy Swiat St, Krakowskie Przedmiescie St
and the Old City that was not possible.
Although we tried, we could never buy our flats,
and therefore we are victims in several ways.
Firstly, we were thrown out of our homes.
Secondly, we feel as second-class citizens.
Thirdly, we are ignored by the banks.
Since we're too old to take out a loan and buy a flat
we can't have a new start at this age.
So now what? Nothing.
When a flat becomes everyone's right,
when everyone can have a roof over their heads,
then we create a community
which is not divided.
And within that community a flat is a common good
used by the whole community
and not by a privileged group.
Nobody from the city has helped us,
neither from the department of infrastructure, nor from the
municipal level. I wrote to many institutions and ministries,
and the responses I received were ridiculous.
The message I got was that nobody cares about this
because that's not the problem
of the state administration.
We have to take care of ourselves.
Attempts to break up local communities
through gentrification induce resistance.
The struggles for the right to housing take many forms
like rent strikes, the prevention of evictions, attempts
to prevent decisions of the city council, and squatting.
The residents can undermine the principle of profit maximization,
which determines the actions of the government and private business.
THE CITY IS NOT A COMPANY
RECLAIM THE CITY! AGAINST PRIVATIZATION!
Contrary to common belief, the subjects of urban development
are not investors and officials, but residents and workers.
Residents and workers, organized together,
are able to set and promote their own conditions.
Warsaw's Tenants' Association: The association
was founded by
tenants of re-privatised buildings.
After a while,
people living in municipal housing joined us
because they did not see any chance to win
on their own.
They joined our struggle against the injustice
in the city and this "wild" privatization.
We have started the eviction. Open the door!
No!
Stop talking crap!
You're violating the peace in this house.
The city's proposes to move people to shacks.
Here's a complaint about this illegal action! - Show it to the police!
Let me in, please.
No!
You have no right to do this!
Next time I hire security guards to take the people out.
What are you doing?
This eviction is a crime! This eviction is a crime!
What are you doing to these people?
HOUSING IS A RIGHT, NOT A COMMODITY!
STOP EVICTIONS!
STOP RENT INCREASES! WE DON'T LIVE IN LUXURY APARTMENTS!
PEOPLE OVER PROFIT!
The self-organizing of a social group
using different methods
such as a rent strike
not paying the rent, paying some part of the rent,
occupying empty buildings
can, in the long-term, stop the processes that lead to the
exploitation of these groups, their break up and separation.
OLYMPIC GAMES INSTEAD OF BREAD. NEW STADIUM: 700 million PLN, SOCIAL HOUSING: 0 PLN
In the winter the tenants are protected from evictions.
The Association of Tenants and
the Chamber of Social Justice
organized a blockade of an illegal eviction during this
winter period. Dozens of people showed up at the blockade.
The bailiffs can't stand above the law.
We expressed that the bailiff's activities
were not legal,
and that they can't throw out people
whenever they want to
during the protection period.
Fortunately, we succeeded in keeping this family here.
We struggle for certain rights,
such as the human right of freedom
and the protection against exploitation.
We want a right that says
that everyone deserves a roof over their heads.
People get legal advice,
they can count on our support during protests,
and we encourage people
to help out other tenants later.
We try to attend all their trials as much as we can.
We write letters to the court, to the judiciary council,
so that they check the representatives of the
developers who show up
in the court
without having the legal permission to do so.
We're trying to fight against this injustice
together.
At the same time we look after our own neighborhood.
We are working on demands,
concerning what municipal housing policies should be like
and what the construction of houses should be like.
For two years we tried to force the council
to organize a special council meeting
for a discussion on housing issues
between tenants and the city hall.
We were very determined, and in March this year
we disturbed a council meeting with our protest.
The tenants were making noise, and thanks to that we
finally succeeded and got that special council meeting.
That meeting was quite spectacular, with a lot of
arguments between tenants and the city hall.
So many people showed up that there
was not enough space for everybody.
This struggle had its effect and we should continue to fight.
Clench your teeth and carefully read
through the tenants protection act.
Ask your friends for contacts to people who have
also been kicked out of their houses, create support groups
and look for effective means of protecting your homes.
Everything depends on the dynamics of the movement,
on how big, strong and determined it's going to be
in order to stop those processes.
The tenants always turn out to be on the weaker side,
but I would say that now they can strike back
at the owners or the city authorities.
But they will only be able to successfully resist against
capital if they put their individual problems, like their
rent or eviction, in the context of housing policies
in this city and this country.
If we want revitalization
to be the renewal of the city for the people
who are living there then we should negotiate as the
people in Berlin-Kreuzberg did.
In Kreuzberg there were protests
which led to negotiations.
They resulted in a twelve-point revitalization code
which specifies what can and what can't be done. It says that
you cannot improve the standards if people are excluded.
Nothing can be done without consulting the people.
The main strategy of neighbourhood initiatives against gentrification is to try to reduce rents.
In some cases they were able to force the local government to follow their demand of a rent limitation.
This only occurs when we have very strong political movement against gentrification.
POZNAN IS NOT A COMPANY
A second strategy are actions to make the neighborhood less attractive,
that means: in contested neighborhoods the new infrastructure is attacked
with bricks or graffiti on the windows or something like this.
HIGH RENTS, LOW WAGES - CHANGE IT
The new investment and modernization strategies need a very good image of the
neighborhood. If the image is bad, or if a bad image is created by actions,
that can help against the gentrification process.
Occupying empty buildings
is a way of gaining autonomy.
Groups which occupy empty buildings and squat them
gain some kind of autonomous power.
They also get some power when it comes to negotiating
with the authorities, with capital,
which can take the form of actual negotiations about spaces,
or it might play a role in everyday life,
for instance when negotiating work conditions,
negotiating whether or not one would take a certain job,
or when negotiating the salary.
If we have independence in the form of housing
then we have more power.
Rozbrat Collective: From the start the history of
this place is connected with Poznan's libertarian initiatives
which had tried for years to find a place for their activities.
Some of these attempts were political.
We tried to squat the "House of the Communist Party".
We tried to squat empty houses.
To be honest, we found this place by accident.
There were car workshops here,
and carpentry workshops
where they had probably been producing coffins.
Everything was in bad condition,
with holes in the roof and the rain dripping in,
there was no electricity, no water,
everything was dirty.
At that time I was doing my alternative civilian service (instead of
military service), and I got a salary of just 120 PLN (30 Euros).
It was impossible to rent anything for that.
Renovating the space here required a lot of work,
and we had very little money. At that time most of the others here
were also doing the alternative civilian service or studied.
So it was an everyday struggle,
to survive and to develop this place
step by step. Over the years, every room
was slowly renovated to make it inhabitable.
Rozbrat Collective: People who are just starting to work
or who still study don't have the financial ability
to get housing for themselves
and to pay for that.
If they want to be able to do so
then they have to work all the time
and have no time
for any other activity.
We realised that we should occupy a space,
put some effort into renovating it and running it
so that we would have the possibility to develop politically,
culturally and also socially.
When I was doing my alternative civilian service
my beliefs changed.
Until then I was saturated with ideas propagated
by mainstream media on early capitalism in Poland
which said that if you want you can do anything.
All you have to do is find a well-paid job
take out a loan, and so on,
and everything will be fine.
While I was working for 120 PLN (30 Euros),
I realized what big difference existed between
what surrounded me
and what the media was saying.
I started to wonder how a young person like myself
with such little income
could "get a piece of the pie"?
Rozbrat Collective: When I was renting a flat my life
was much different because I had to run back and forth
between my studies and my temporary jobs,
without regular contracts and benefits
and an hourly pay of just 3.50 PLN (0.80 Euros).
Living here means
that I can use my energy differently.
I can do things that satisfy me.
I can fulfill some of my dreams,
beyond the conditions imposed on me
by the neoliberal economy,
where everything depends on the market
and people don't do things together.
Rozbrat Collective: All decisions made here are first discussed
and only accepted if all people living here agree on them.
We are independent from outside financial resources,
we are independent from the decisions
of the city council.
The solutions we are able to put into
practice we often share with others outside the squat.
There are a lot of presentations,
political discussions, lectures,
and those are moments
in which Rozbrat "radiates"
outside of the physical space that it occupies.
Through collective grassroots activities
and self-organization
we are physically changing this space,
and we also try to give
the local community a chance
to participate in our initiatives.
This includes: the publishing house,
the bike workshop,
the weekly film screenings,
the silkscreen printshop etc.
It's about showing people that they can do things
in a from that is different
from the relationship between companies and customers.
This is a space that is neither private nor public.
It's a space that is community-run,
and because we don't live with a division
between public and private
the role of women is also different.
The women here are not obliged to do all the housework.
We divide all duties and rights equally,
regardless of gender.
This is a way to break the traditional family pattern.
There was a threat
that this place might be closed down.
When that happened
we decided to intervene into the city politics
concerning the local development plan
which included this place.
We got engaged in activities
with the inhabitants of the Solacz district.
We proposed changes
to the land development plan for Solacz.
We supported the local people
who wanted to leave the space as it is,
including the Rozbrat squat,
as an open space for the community that lives here,
with a space for public usage, a park accessible to everyone.
We oppose city policies that leave all spaces,
regardless of the social role they play,
to the vision the land developers have for the city.
The developers want to privatize this space,
plant pretty little trees, and straight cut little bushes.
But then most of the inhabitants
won't have any access to it,
they will only be able to look at it from behind a high fence.
People don't have to live isolated in their own apartments,
anonymously, separated from others.
Sharing a space
makes sense not only financially - because it is cheaper to
have one washing machine, one stove etc. for many people -
but also ecologically and socially:
We have social needs,
like talking while eating breakfast
and helping each other in everyday problems.
So living here is in itself a statement
showing that other ways of living, communal ways,
are possible.
Revitalization can be different
from the one run by city authorities.
It can be based
on people renovating tenement houses themselves,
by means of self-organization,
and it could be a way to create new houses
for people who are not wealthy.
A good example for a different kind of revitalization
would be if residents were allowed to occupy abandoned buildings.
Often empty spaces are not occupied
with the intention to create a social centre
such as Rozbrat.
Often abandoned houses are occupied
quietly, illegally.
There are lots of empty buildings here
because in Poland housing is a commodity
that is being speculated on.
That is why buildings
often stay empty for years.
In this situation,
people like single mothers, retired people, excluded,
just occupy those spaces.
It is an issue that people don't talk about.
Sociologists don't talk about it,
neither do journalists. It is an unmentioned issue.
In Europe, uprisings, social and revolutionary movements
have been linked to the struggle
for better housing conditions.
We can look at the 1980s in Poland,
and the Paris Commune
or the Russian Revolution.
Memory of this is somehow erased from the social
consciousness, but the history repeats itself.
When young people, workers, are thrown out of their homes
or forced to live in basements or attics
there is a big chance that another uprising will occur.
And I think that
we are in a period when this might happen.
THIS HOME TAKEN AWAY FROM THE PEOPLE STILL STANDS EMPTY