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D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism
obtained in the research of a pioneering team led by Ewa Kaltenberg-Kwiatkowska, who dealt with the sociology of housing in Poland in the 1970s. The researchers observed that access to housing – in addition to education or free time resources – is one of the main factors differentiating society.32 Representatives of the intelligentsia more often than representatives of working-class professions lived in higher-standard premises, in new buildings, in better located and better connected parts of cities.
Other forms of exclusion overlap with class inequalities. The authors of the Romanian manifesto write:
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Among these categories, there are groups that find themselves at the intersection of several conditions of precarity, violence, and marginality. The Roma communities are a group that constantly feels the effects of the housing crisis […], housing injustice works according to a racist logic, revealing itself through an acute and consistent dispossession and dislocation of the Roma persons and communities.
Indeed, housing policy can be one of the most effective tools of racial segregation – take for example ‘redlining’ – the infamous planning practice applied in the United States since the 1930s. Its effects are sorely felt even to an old mining town of Most, its inhabitants opposed this day. Entire social groups are spatially excluded and the settlement of Roma families in the neighbourhood. condemned to living in poorer material and sanitary Eventually, the settlement of Chanov, intended for the conditions, poorer access to services and public institu- Romani community, was established a few kilometres tions, and problems with finding employment. When a away from the new, comfortable housing estates. Spamajor public health crisis strikes – such as the current tially separated, excluded in terms of transport accespandemic – people in these areas are most at risk, they sibility, and with lesser supply of services, it quickly have poorer access to medical facilities, and they are became a kind of ghetto.34 more severely affected by the economic meltdown. The immediate ghettoization of such centres after
Many Roma communities in Central European the political transformation and the collapse of large countries are struggling with such problems as a result industrial plants took place in many areas. The living of both the systemic, long-term discrimination, and the conditions of Roma people in the 1990s deteriorated – modern-day economic mechanisms. Despite the fact be it in Chanov, or the Luník settlement near Košice, that after the end of World War II, many initiatives were or the Hungarian tower block estates in Miskolc, while undertaken in the region aimed at the emancipation latest research shows that the housing situation of this of the Roma people, improving their living conditions, ethnic group is improving slowly. Roma people live and supporting the development of social and cultural in significantly worse conditions than the majority institutions, individual states pursued inconsistent societies: in more overcrowded, substandard housing, policies and applied practices that were in fact favouring lacking basic amenities – often without running water or segregation. Csaba Jelinek points out that in Hungary adequate sanitary infrastructure.35 such an effect was accompanied by the introduction of Free-market housing policy exacerbates these probthe New Economic Mechanism: “the previous univer- lems and generates new ones, which can be illustrated salist and egalitarian discourse was transformed into with the example of the Czech Republic, a country with a more exclusive and selective one, focused on quali- a limited supply of municipal housing. Housing benefits tative differences between various groups benefiting are the main form of support for families in a difficult from social welfare [...] the main effect of which was the financial situation, and although the subsidy is small, stigmatization of the poorer people and Roma families.”33 it is permanent and reliable. No wonder that entrepre-
The effects of such stigmatization were also notice- neurs soon appeared in the housing market, having able in Czechoslovakia. When a modern noticed a source of guaranteed profit in the recipients 8 of the benefits. Private companies began to buy former industrial centre was built on the ruins of WERONIKA PARAFIANOWICZ workers’ hostels and apartments in multi-family blocks of flats and rent them out to people who receive housing allowances. The regulations do not define the conditions to be met by social housing. As a result, numerous Romani families, who cannot find apartments for rent in the commercial market – among other things, due to prejudice on the part of the majority society36 – are forced to live in substandard, overcrowded, run-down workers’ hostels or dilapidated blocks of flats. Shortterm lease contracts and the terrible condition of the buildings (which can be taken out of service at any time) force Roma families to move frequently. Another feature of the neoliberal economic model emerges: there is no group too poor or too vulnerable to become a source of additional profit. The uncontrolled market not only fails to provide decent housing conditions for those less well-to-do, but it also very effectively seizes public funds intended to help them.37
The ‘trade in poverty’ in Czech cities is not accidental, neither is it a Central European aberration. Trade in substandard units rented to recipients of housing benefits, on par with toxic financial services (such as high-interest payday loans), is one of the most widespread practices of the dynamically developing ‘poverty industry.’ Its activities have a negative impact on the housing situation not only in Central Europe, but also, for example, in the United States. In the US, much like in the Czech Republic, it is the representatives of minority groups that feel its effects most acutely.
The ‘trade in poverty’ also leads to spatial isolation of people in a difficult financial situation, to the deterioration of buildings and entire housing estates, and, as a result, to further tensions and conflicts. The housing crisis is hitting the Roma community in two ways: firstly, it exposes them to living in precarious conditions; secondly, it leads to the deepening of xenophobic sentiments in the majority society and the intensification of racist incidents. You can clearly feel that the atmosphere in Most is hostile towards Romani people. Three years ago, Czech public opinion was shocked by the campaign ahead of the local elections, in which local political groups openly used racist, anti-Roma rhetoric. The majority of the inhabitants of Most and its vicinity are plagued by the progressive neglect of housing estates and the debt of housing communities, partly as a result of speculation on the housing market. Their anger, however, is turned not towards the corrupt management of the local housing cooperative which looks after a large part of the housing stock in the region, but towards the tenants on benefits – and most of those are Roma people. Instead of fighting the unfair practices by private companies, the residents of Most are demanding the creation of areas where families on benefits will not be able to move in, and thus, effectively, another form of spatial segregation.38
Neoliberal housing policy preys on the social divisions already existing in our communities; worse, it deepens those divides: the anger of those affected by its negative effects is channelled not against the source of the problem, but against even weaker and more excluded groups. The discriminatory mechanisms are escalating.
The issues described above explain why the manifesto of the Romanian collective mentioned in the introduction bears the significant subheading Împotriva pandemiei capitalismului și rasismului (Combating the pandemic of capitalism and racism). How to fight this pandemic? The authors offer a clear-cut prescription:
The time has come for the rich to pay for everything that they stole through workforce exploitation, real estate speculation, and the theft of the government’s resources […]. We need radical measures to make sure that the economic post-crisis order will be one of equality and social justice. The time has come for those privileged by the system all over the world, who have accumulated profit and enormous wealth over the last decades, to pay their dues. […] It is time to end the regime where the real estate developers, the great renting companies, and private utility providers make
The postulate may sound radical, but we should start getting used to this type of radicalism. In the context of the multidimensional crisis we face today, it is not enough to debunk the naturalized “common sense” elements of neoliberal ideology. It is necessary to disseminate values and attitudes that may have an impact on changing the socio-economic and political paradigm. Perhaps it is worth finally to consider abandoning capitalism as a reasonable and well-founded postulate? The examples I have cited from the history of Central European countries show that socialist systems, in which housing was treated as a basic need rather than a commodity, were much better at securing it. However, they also show that economic mechanisms (for example, a planned increase in housing construction spending) and only declarative egalitarianism, albeit not accompanied by a constant evaluation of anti-inequality policies, is not enough, especially in societies burdened with social stratification and long traditions of national or ethnic discrimination.
If we come back to seeing housing as a way to meet the basic human needs, we will also be more effective in dealing with the environmental burdens generated by the construction sector. During the deepening climate and ecological crisis, it is extremely important to provide all people with decent housing conditions without undue pressure on the environment. Let us finally begin to learn from the experience of housing policies, and then let us use it in a solidarity-based fight for a world with better living conditions – and a better life – for everyone.
32 E. Kaltenberg-Kwiatkowska, Słowo wstępne, [in:] Mieszkanie. Analiza socjologiczna, edited by E. Kaltenberg-Kwiatkowska, Warszawa:
Państwowe Wydawnictwa Ekonomiczne, 1982.
Western researchers also drew attention to similar issues, and noted the spatial and class segregation of Polish cities. Compare:
J. Kusiak, op. cit., p. 106. 33 C. Jelinek, op. cit., p. 52. 34 History of the demolition of old Most and the construction of a new urban centre, as well as
Czech-Romani relations in the region is described in detail in: M. Spurný, Most do budoucnosti: laboratoř socialistické modernity na severu
Čech, Praha: Karolinum, 2016. 35 As many as 68 per cent of Romania’s Roma community and more than one third of Roma people living in Hungary and Croatia do not have access to running water. A similarly high percentage of Romani families live in houses or apartments without adequate sanitary infrastructure (toilets or bathrooms): in Romania this deprivation affects almost 80 per cent, in Bulgaria and Croatia over 40 per cent, in
Slovakia and Hungary – almost 33 per cent.
Compare: A persisting concern: anti-Gypsyism as a barrier to Roma inclusion, European Union
Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2018, p. 43 ff., https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/ fra_uploads/fra-2018-anti-gypsyism-barrier-roma-inclusion_en.pdf (accessed: 15.03.2021). 36 Research from a few years ago shows that as many as 60 per cent of Roma people in the
Czech Republic experienced ethnic discrimination when searching for a flat or a house.
Compare: T. Peric, The Housing Situation of
Roma Communities: Regional Roma Survey 2011, Bratislava: UNDP, 2012, p. 49. 37 The evictions of Roma families in Varnsdorf during the second wave of the pandemic have recently caused a great stir and a wave of protests. Compare: SUH, Majitel bytů v Kovářské ulici ve Varnsdorfu se zbavil poslední rodiny.
Město pomoc odmítá, A2.Alarm, 06.01.2021, https://a2larm.cz/2021/01/majitel-bytu-v-kovarske-ulici-ve-varnsdorfu-se-zbavil-posledni-rodiny-mesto-pomoc-odmita/ (accessed: 15.03.2021); P. Šplíchal, Romské rodiny z
Kovářské ulice ve Varnsdorfu dopadly jako obvykle, A2.Alarm, 02.03.2021, https://a2larm. cz/2021/03/romske-rodiny-z-kovarske-ulice-ve-varnsdorfu-dopadly-jako-obvykle/ (accessed: 15.03.2021). 38 Compare: S. Uhlová, P. Šplíchal, Most k české politice, A2.Alarm, 16.09.2018, https://a2larm. cz/2018/09/most-k-ceske-politice/ (accessed: 15.03.2021).
