Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 115: Building Tenant Power — with Barbara Steenbergen
Speakers: Fiorella Pinillos, Am Johal, Barbara Steenbergen
[theme music]
Fiorella Pinillos 0:02
Hola, mi nombre es Fiorella Pinillos, y este es Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar our host Am Johal is joined by Barbara Steenbergen from the International Union of Tenants. Together, they talk about the role of tenant unions in Europe, as well as their advances in housing policies and protecting tenant rights. Que lo disfrutan.
[theme music fades]
Am Johal 0:31
Hello, welcome everyone to Below the Radar, really excited that Barbara Steenbergen could join us today. She's with the International Union of Tenants in their EU office based in Brussels. Welcome, Barbara.
Barbara Steenbergen 0:45
Yes, thank you. Thank you for inviting me, Am. Nice to be here.
Am Johal 0:49
Yeah. Wondering if we can begin, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit?
Barbara Steenbergen 0:54
Yes, I will. So my name is Barbara Steenbergen. And if you translate this name, it's actually a Dutch name. If you translate it into English, it would be Rocky Mountains, Barbara Rocky Mountains. [laughs] And I live and work in Brussels. For 12 years, I've represented the International Union of Tenants towards European institutions. And if I may say, this is one of the nicest jobs you can have on earth. It is really something where you can put your passion and dedication into the protection of tenants rights and the right to housing, and, of course, to shape political agendas. So this is what I'm doing in Brussels. Before that, I worked 10 years in Berlin, for the German Union of Tenants, where we really did everything to protect tenant's rights, to do more urban and sustainable development. We worked with the parliament, but we also worked with the people, we helped them to organize themselves to create new forms of participation, direct tenant participation. So this is really a wonderful job you can do and yeah, I'm happy that here the colleagues from Canada are interested to listen to what we are doing in Europe.
Am Johal 2:12
I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you, yourself, got involved in organizing with tenants rights in Berlin. So how did you walk into this type of community and political organizing?
Barbara Steenbergen 2:25
Yes, I'm actually coming from finances. I'm coming from finance policy and work there in the city to do policy for a political party. So it was there in the parliament. And at a certain time, a colleague of mine asked me, “Barbara, would you like to change of subject? Do you think housing policy is something interesting you would like to do?” And I said, “Well, why not?” Because housing policy is something everybody's interested in and everybody can, can tell a story about it. Everybody has good stories and bad stories. So I thought, “yeah, why not do the change.” And then I became president for international relations at the Deutsche Mieterbund, the German union of tenants and so this wonderful story started.
Am Johal 3:14
Now in the Canadian context, particularly in a city like Vancouver, that's so expensive in terms of real estate, but also rental. And then also in terms of protection of tenants rights, the tenure of housing, we have this term here, renovictions, and others, we have property prices that have gone up in profound ways that have resulted in further evictions of people. And this seems like a very different context than the European one or in many other parts of the world where you don't see this sort of phenomenon in terms of the rate of change, and the wholesale removal and moving of people through economic forces and other means. And I'm wondering if you can sort of characterize the state of the policy, environment and situation in Europe, where you work in terms of how countries are approaching it, and where you think some of the more interesting ideas are happening?
Barbara Steenbergen 4:11
Sometimes everybody says in Europe, the situation for tenants is better. I give a clear yes and no. Let me start from the supply side of the market. We do have, also in Europe, a crisis in affordable housing provision. We do have a serious crisis and the European Commission, which is quite a neo-liberal union, they even checked it and we do have an investment gap of 57 billion euro per year in Europe in the investment of affordable housing, so something is going on. Financial crisis hit us also very, very hard, the global financial crisis. We have a massive, let's say restructuring of housing markets where we, before had, say, small landlords. We now have a concentration, we have a concentration of institutional investors buying the housing stock that is on the market currently, which is mostly the public and the social housing stock. A lot of the social and public housing stock has been sold in Europe. This is not just from 2008 on but also from the year 2000 on. So we do have a massive problem in the supply of affordable housing. But on the other hand, and now I'm talking from the demand side, from the tenant side, I do think that our tenant protection laws are more elaborate than, for instance, in Canada or in other Anglo-Saxon countries. So this is something where we really, I think, booked quite good successes. And this is the reason. The reason behind that is of course, that we in Europe, we are really a country of tenants. In many, many countries, the percentage of tenants is higher than the percentage of people owning an apartment. So there also must be very strong and good consumer law and the rent law is part of the consumer Law. So this the situation in Europe, I do think that there is a little bit of change coming now. Because we see that even the big investors are a little bit afraid of legislation coming out. And legislation is coming from many, many parts, it is coming from the European Union, it's also coming from the national government, it's coming from regional governments, it's coming from city governments. So this is something perhaps interesting to learn in Canada, where you do have, I think, a massive financialization and capitalization of housing.
Am Johal 7:07
The more recent passage of the initiatives in the European Union regarding tenants rights, wondering if you can talk a little bit about some of the advances that were made there, because obviously, they probably come from decades of work of community organizing and policy development, to create a political consensus currently, and what about these policies that you find interesting?
Barbara Steenbergen 7:29
Yes, of course, of course, let's say to make a change to towards a social rent law, this is not something you can do in a week or even in the legislative period. This will last longer, say the tenant movement was established in Germany, it was the first country so our first tenants union was founded in 1899. And since then, we have constantly been working to have fair and balanced tenants protection rights, which we call the social rent law. So this is something which is going in line also with the social movement, the social movement, also of workers. And this is something we had to fight for for years. Nevertheless, as you know, after the fall of the wall, we had a lot of new countries in the European Union, so Central and Eastern Europe as we call them, CEE, and there was actually not a real tenants protection right. So we had to set this up. And we did it. So it is actually possible to do something like that. It is possible to change the law, to have more security of tenure, protection from evictions, protection from renovictions. But it takes time. That takes, let's say, the long run, you need to fight. And I think the only way you can achieve this is by really organize tenants, establish tenants unions, establish tenants unions as partners in negotiating with governments. Maybe on the local level, maybe on the regional or national level, or even the supranational level like in Europe. So this is the way to do it. And I think we achieved quite a lot. And what I see now, in some countries in Eastern Europe, we made big progress in favor of tenants. One of the countries where we have quite a lot of let's say, progress is the Czech Republic, but also in Poland. And now we are starting with more and more countries because working for a tenants union means to export best practices in law, in participation of people, in community engagement, this is what it is all about.
Am Johal 9:53
Now, in places like Berlin, where recently, within the last year or two, the city actually socialized some private apartment buildings. And I imagine that there would have been a lot of advocacy from tenants and other groups advocating for a policy change such as that. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit also about the supply side of what is publicly held beyond the policy side of tenancy protections? Some of these movements are essentially addressing, you know, attempts at financialization, or the acceleration of capital moving through booming cities, such as Berlin.
Barbara Steenbergen 10:31
Yes, yes. You can actually say that Berlin is kind of left for all progressive policies, together with Barcelona. So they have what we say in French, en entente cordiale. In Berlin, sometimes it is starting and Barcelona takes some actions over. First of all, Berlin is the city where everybody really is a small housing politician. Everybody wants to talk about housing policy, everybody can tell stories, everybody is also very mobile, or has been very mobile. So in Berlin, you move, you move, you change apartments, at least, you have changed apartments in the past. So in Berlin, we have a lot of, let's say, power from the grassroots. We also have a lot of tenants, formally organized in our union, which is to the Berlin Tenants Association, we are more than 180,000 people organized. And this is, of course, a big stakeholder. So if you want to do housing policy in Berlin, you cannot ignore the Berlin Tenants Association. And this Tenants Association has a clear mission. It is to provide more affordable housing, to strengthen the not-for-profit sector, to go for more, let's say from the ground projects, co-housing projects. And this is what you mentioned in your question, if there is a bad policy from the Berlin government, turn it around. So, in Berlin we are talking about re-municipalization. We are talking about repossession. Berlin has sold a lot of the social housing stock, we have now a big movement to buy it back. And the people, they are really they're going on streets, they demonstrate, at least before COVID, we had demonstrations with more than 60,000 people just for the housing question. It was amazing. I had the pleasure to be there. And you really felt that you are part of a big and strong democratic progressive movement. So I think these things are going on in Berlin, we are now working on several referendums to get back our social and affordable housing stock. And we also have the famous rent freeze now. I think it is well known that we have a rent freeze, which actually leads to the situation that tenants can even reduce their rents. They are not frozen. If they are too high, according to the recent rent freeze or rent gap, you can reduce your rent. And we calculated that 300,000 households in Berlin have the possibility to reduce their rent. And the average reduction is 160 euros. I don't know what this is in Canadian dollars. But yeah, it's quite substantial, the rent reduction. So this is something I think we can be very proud of. We will see what's going on. The landlords, of course, are not happy about it. We now have a case running at the Constitutional Court. Let's see how it ends. But anyhow, what I wanted to tell you, Am, is that we started up with this rent freeze in Berlin. And it was nearly one-by-one exported to the city of Barcelona. So they are the second city in Europe who are doing the rent freeze now. And this gives us hope. And this is also, let's say, I think the key work if you work at international level for tenants unions, this is something, tenant protection, tenant security across borders.
Am Johal 14:27
We have international bodies like the UN, which has had a Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing for some time, and really looking at the value of a human rights approach to housing, which includes policy development, policy mobilization, and in some places that could land down very easily and well in terms of policy development. For other places, maybe not so well. And I'm wondering how the UN special repertoire’s office on the right to adequate housing, how relevant that is to your work in the context of your organizing and policy development work regarding the EU and also probably consultations you're doing at the nation state level with housing organizations?
Barbara Steenbergen 15:09
It is extremely relevant, of course. So the Special Rapporteurs, we are working very closely together with them. They are doing important work at the United Nations level. So this is important. They are also dealing with this human rights based approach. This is important to have, let's say an international level and platform where you can talk about housing policy. But this is something at international level. Rent law is national, so we always claim for the combination. So international human rights resolutions, laws, of course, but at the same time, the social rent law at national level, this is extremely important as part of the consumer law, as part of the civil law. Because don't forget, our main issue of all the tenants unions is to protect tenants and protect them if they have problems with their landlords and protect them, even at court. So we are claiming for a good and progressive social rent law. And this has to come hand-in-hand with of course, the international framework at UN level.
Am Johal 16:27
Given the long history of tenants unions in Europe as well, how the funding of the organization happens. Is it through membership fees, is it through foundations, civil society organizations? And the reason I ask is that in a lot of contexts, where we have something similar here, it tends to be done on a voluntary ad hoc basis that's either unfunded or underfunded for the type of work that needs to be done in a long term sense from both a policy, a lobbying point of view, and also from a tenant engagement perspective. So I'm interested in the longevity of how you have built up those structures over time.
Barbara Steenbergen 17:05
The International Union of tenants, it's entirely funded by membership fees. We do not get grants. And you can imagine this doesn't make us rich, but it makes us independent. And our voices are strong. So we heavily criticize governments, of course. It's sometimes hard to do it if you're financed by governments, we are financed by membership fees. And most of the tenants unions are also in Europe financed by membership fees, entirely. Yeah, let's say the system works mostly like that, you become a member of a tenant union as a kind of insurance. So in Europe, before you sign a rental contract, it is very common that you become a member of the tenants union at the same time. So this is something that works as a model. And it is a kind of, let's say, system, that's good also to protect the people becoming our members legally, but also to make them, let's say, policymakers in housing rights, in tenant law, in urban renewal. So, what we are always doing is we are also giving seminars. What is a good housing policy? How can you engage in your community? How can you, new member of our tenants unions, how can you attract your neighbors also to become a member of tenants union and in a way create in your house, a strong tenants movement? So this is how we start. So we really start in the block. And then we go on and on and on. And this is the kind of system which is working very well, as is also, I think, a good thing, because in many, many countries who do it like this, if one member of the house where there are problems with the landlord. So for instance, there is a renovation, which might end up in renoviction, or the house is sold. If we have one member there in the house. We protect all the other people living in the house too, you see. So I think this is something quite interesting also for tenants unions to get bigger, larger. The system has built up a really strong network of people engaged in tenants rights.
Am Johal 19:32
If you were to sort of scan Europe in terms of what are the most interesting policies at the nation, state or city level, and places that you are, you know, maybe concerned about or feel like the policy framework is underdeveloped at this time. How would you? How would you characterize that?
Barbara Steenbergen 19:51
Yeah, let's say I have a lot on my bucket list. First of all, we have to do something in Spain and Portugal. Spain and Portugal, they are countries which are extremely concentrated on home ownership. Why is that so? Because there were actually no fair tenants rights there, there was no fair rent law. So everybody chooses to become a homeowner without having the money to be a homeowner. And this is something we need to change. Absolutely. In the very short term. And we are now starting, let's say, with some models and labs in Barcelona, as I told you before. We have now in Catalonia, we have, I think, one of the best and progressive rent laws, which is also supported by the parliament, legally. We are working on that. We are working in Portugal, that we finally have a housing law there, a social housing law. We have been fighting for that for years. Now, it is in the pipeline. It might be that we will get it before the summer time. So these are, for instance, two countries where we have to do much more. I do think that when it comes to learning from each other, we have to take a look at the Scandinavian countries, they have some special systems. In Scandinavia, for instance, we have universal access to public housing. There is no social housing in Scandinavia, they call it public housing. And public housing is for the public, for everybody. So they do not work with income limits. In general, everybody in Scandinavia has access to affordable housing, a very interesting system, I think, because this is also something we are advocating for. We do think that social housing shouldn't be only for the poorest of the poor. But also for the middle incomes, to key workers in the city. This is a claim, which is really the core of the tenants movement. Also, the small and medium incomes should have access to affordable housing. So this is, let's say, another interesting housing policy. I also like the policy approach that we have in the Netherlands, also the country I'm very fond of when it comes to housing policy. There, really everybody, literally everybody is living in social housing. Because you are starting your housing career with an apartment, which is from a Housing Corporation. 30% of the entire housing stock in the Netherlands is social housing. So the first apartment you move into as a student is definitely social housing. And this is something I think it's very interesting. It's also very strong and also strongly financed the system. Last but not least, let's say when it comes to cities, next to Berlin, and I already told you about my city, Berlin. The second city I like the most when it comes to housing policy. Successful housing policy is, of course, Vienna, the city with the highest chair of affordable and social housing. Actually, Vienna, the city is worldwide, the largest landlord. They have 220,000 housing units, affordable housing units, and they have income limits, which are quite high. So that it is very clear that middle incomes have access to affordable housing there. So this is also a success model. But financed through a tax which is more than 100 years old. So, again, such a system has to be built step by step, but the difference in Canada, you have to start at a certain point. And then it can go in the right direction, you have to make a start. And this is what I learned also, from our interview that we had, I think Canada is a little bit shy when it comes to strong protection of tenants and you can make a start, you're also a little bit reluctant in really going for social and not for profit housing for Community Land Trust. This seems to be also a little bit new. So I can only encourage you to go for it. It's really working in many, many countries. And it is not the return to communism. Don't be afraid of that.
Am Johal 24:30
[laughs] I'm wondering, you had mentioned that there's going to be a festival next summer in Finland.
Barbara Steenbergen 24:36
Yes, yes. We will have the International Social Housing Festival in Helsinki, Finland. It is in June 2022. I would be very happy to welcome participants from Canada there. We will present best practices, all the policymakers are there, all the big social and public housing associations are there, but also the entire, let's say, scene, the scientific scene, the universities, the students, the grassroots organizations. So I think this is something very, very interesting. And this festival is open for everybody. And yeah, try to get there to Helsinki. It's also a beautiful city in Finland. And do not only stay for one week, stay a little bit longer and then also visit me in Brussels and we can talk about housing policy in Europe.
Am Johal 25:27
Barbara, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar. You've given us a lot to think about and It would be great to stay in touch with you as policy discussions evolve here in Canada. Thank you.
Barbara Steenbergen 25:39
Thank you.
[theme music]
Fiorella Pinillos 25:42
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Barbara, head to the show notes to learn more about the International Union of Tenants and International Social Housing Festival, as well as some of the other initiatives covered in this episode. Gracias y hasta la próxima.
[theme music fades]