*since the beginning of April some houses in Athens have moved on to a rental strike having on mind the following reasoning so as to expand this network wherever it is possible.

We are in the middle of a period where the pandemic of the covid-19 is the only thing of interest to everyone as the control measures taken to combat it (whether they are convincing or not) create a suffocating condition in our lives. The main slogan of that period is “stay_home” and the politicians reassures us that if we obey, everything will be just fine.

But, we know very well that this slogan doesn’t concern all of us. Migrants that are stowed away at concentration camps, prisoners in jails or in psychiatric hospitals, residents of nursing homes, homeless people and drug addicts, women that suffer domestic or sexist violence (where the house is not a “safe shelter”), college students residing at student residences are forced to leave their rooms, those are only some of the people that they remain in obscurity and they are thrown away to the margin of isolation and death, without necessarily meaning that their main threat is catching the virus.

And on top of that here we are as well, the long term unemployed or the employees, locals and migrants that had the luck to have work insurance (in some cases our working hours were not fully declared, maybe half or even less), some others used to work completely undeclared in jobs, without health insurance, such us childcare or housekeeping, etc. and then we were suddenly left jobless overnight. For the majority of us no state support is provided, meanwhile the rents and all the other financial “obligations”, such as bills of public utilities (electricity, etc.), shared debts of apartment building tenants, the apartment’s central heating bills, all these are still running without taking into consideration if we can cope with them.

But no matter what, we are not left alone, we won’t be isolated! It is crystal clear that we cannot trust the government with our lives. The measures taken to fight back the covid-19 are here to stay for a long time and they have already exhausted us financially. Maybe the time has come to fight back the rental!

Rent strike – Rent Reduction – Refusal of Payments

We live in this city and we pay our rent. The money that we spend on the rents has been disproportionate to our wages –if we take any wages at all- for some years now. Basically, we spend most of the money that we earn on the rent, doing awful jobs, in order to remain in our houses. For us, those houses are the only and first residence and thus we are not at all in the same position with the landlords as these houses are usually a surplus so they can make a profit out of them.

That is a sufficient reason for us to refuse to pay our rent by whatever means we think best, communicating it to the owners in any way we want. But of course we don’t have illusions about whether the landlords can make us not to “stay_home”, by evicting us from it. That’s why we must stay together. We are spread around our apartment building, our neighborhood and our friends this choice in order to give dynamic solutions to the issue of our housing.

We come in contact with other homes that are refusing to pay in our neighborhoods. We will leave no one alone, not only in the dystopia we live in these days, but also in the one we will live in the future, whenever/if this condition ends. We make our problems visible and we collectivize our refusals.

Instead of paying our rent we choose to keep our money so we can live the next months and we organize ourselves to defend our lives

Permanent and decent residence for all

 

Call for rent strike!
Κάλεσμα σε απεργία ενοικίου!
Thirrje për grevë qirash!
Appel à une grève de loyer!
فراخوان برای اعتصاب اجاره خانه!
دعوة للاضراب عن دفع الايجار!

norent_19@riseup.net

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