Demonstration for rent control, cheaper housing and squatting rights
As a part of the Night of the Homeless 17.10. we will organize a demonstration starting from Hakaniemi market place at 15.00. At the end of the demonstration Asuntotoiminta network will perform a non-violent act of civil disobedience and squat a building as a protest against the high price of housing and against real estate speculation.
We do not squat houses out of charity but because we fight for our common interests. The need for cheap housing binds together a multiplicity of people whose housing is on an insecure ground.
What’s more, the current economical crisis causes income insecurity to more
and more people. Students, unemployed, employed and small entrepreneurs are all part of a group living in a precarious housing situation and who therefore share a common interest with the homeless.
We are fightning against both long-term homelessness and new forms of homelessness such as youth or short-term homelessness. These problems can only be solved by producing enough cheap rental housing to satisfy the demand. A change is needed and the beginning for that change - at least in the question of housing - can be the events of the Night of the Homeless.
Asuntotoiminta network involves among others the same people who organized emergency housing on the Night of the Homeless in 2008, the squatting of election campaign cabins the same autumn and in January 2009 an emergency housing squat that police ended after two hours with a threat of violence. Involved in our activities are people that have been involved in Prekariaatti.org, Opiskelijatoiminta and Murrostorstai 2009 networks.
