The Housing Justice group of the feminist alliance #ThanksForTheFlowers made this amazing intersectional manifesto – Under the Same Roof
Home is our living space, a space of feminist struggles, of our care, of our work. Home is the space where we were told to โstay safeโ during the pandemic. But what do you do when your home is not a safe place? Or when you don’t have a home?
Housing is not yet guaranteed as a right, but itโs presented as a commodity, a luxury consumer good in a capitalist system. Its purpose is to make profit for some at the expense of others. Many of us do not actually have homes, either because we have been forcibly evicted and left homeless, or because we live in precarious and overcrowded conditions without access to basic necessities. Many of us cannot find affordable or decent rents and are discriminated against because we donโt measure up to the image of the „ideal tenants”.
And for many of us who have a home, itโs not a safe space, because we live with abusive partners or family members. With these persons, women are forced to stay enclosed, without the possibility of receiving support to leave these situations. The increase in time spent at home in conditions of violence and abuse, as well as the volume of domestic and care work, which women disproportionately engage in, has affected our mental and physical health.
Housing problems existed before the pandemic and the crisis it has caused. Now, in a globalized world, where profit is put before people’s health and the environment, all the struggles we were already facing have intensified! Overcrowding, indecent living conditions, utility debts – all of these, during the pandemic, put us in extensive danger!
During the state of emergency and the quarantine periods, many of our rights have been suspended. But many people have never enjoyed these rights in the first place! Housing injustice means the racialized segregation of entire communities on the outskirts of cities, living in toxic environments, dangerous to physical and mental health.
Enough is enough! We do not want to return to the normalcy of overcrowded spaces, domestic violence, unrecognized reproductive work and the precarity of our living conditions! We reject the normalcy in which profit is put before people, communities and the environment! We reject the normalcy of deepening debt, poverty and inequality!
Our demands:
Letโs make access to housing the ground for intersectional feminist demands! Letโs make homes a safe space for everyone. Housing is a basic necessity and not a commodity!
- On-demand relocation of people who have gone through domestic violence!
- Stop evictions!
- Cancel state rents for those who face financial problems!
- Control of private rent!
- Universal and unrestricted access to all utilities, regardless of the contractual situation or debts!
- Housing and socio-medical services for the homeless!
- Increase of the social housing fund, according to local needs!
- Adequate and financially affordable housing for all, without overcrowding and precarious conditions!
The pandemic emerged from a logic of privatizing common spaces, destroying the environment, and exploiting other living beings. The answer to the pandemic cannot be privatization, nor austerity policies, but rather the creation of shared spaces and social policies: Housing for all!
Public health, public spaces, public education! We demand ceasing the destruction of nature and starting to care for other living beings – all in common, all at once!
