German housing action groups, which also organized the international day of action on March 28, have called for attention on 10 March to draw attention to the problems surrounding rents and housing. We will do that in Amsterdam by visiting some of the largest 'financialized landlords', together with tenants and other 'housing consumers' who are victims of their practice.
(Photo David Evers CC2.0/Flickr)
(See here the international call for March 10th. The program in Amsterdam is organized by Bond Precaire Woonvorm (BPW), Tenant Interest South HBZ and In Poen You Cannot Live)
We start at 16:00 at the CBRE office on the Zuidas (Amsterdam Zuid Station), walk via Orange Capital Partners (Minervalaan 63) and Vonovia Finance (Apollolaan 133) to De Pijp and squat cafe Molli Chaoot (Van Ostadestraat 55 hs). There is another informative evening program from 20:00.
The walking tour through the heart of the financialized housing market starts at 4:00 PM in front of the headquarters of the largest international 'real estate consultancy' CBRE on the Zuidas (Gustav Mahlerlaan 405, right next to Amsterdam Zuid station). CBRE not only provides dearly-paid 'advice' to investors about buying up and extorting real estate, but has recently also massively bought up rental properties in Amsterdam and deposited them in Luxembourg. (source) CBRE also manages real estate for investors. One of the many construction projects that CBRE continues to manage is the ADM site in the Western Ports, which has been cleared for vacancy. As they call it, that is “creating real estate solutions for investors and end users that REALLY add value”. (source)
We then walk for a long time the building of Orange Capital Partners, the “Real Estate Investment and Asset Management company based in Amsterdam” that owns, among other things, 1200 houses and also massively resells, to CBRE (such as the now infamous houses on and around Delflandplein)
We continue the walk to kantoor's office Vonovia Finance on Apollolaan. We do this partly at the request of the organized tenants of Vonovia in Germany. There it is the largest private homeowner, a gigantic company that has become infamous for its highly automated way of managing (and clearing). It is one of the companies in danger of being expropriated in Berlin if the referendum succeeds there this year. But what is Vonovia doing in the Netherlands at the Zuidas? We'll hear it on the spot.
The walk is completed with a short tour through The pipe to end at the legendary squat cafe The Mollie ('since 1979', Van Ostadestraat 55 hs). There you can eat and drink for a small fee. An informative program will start there at 20.00 with more information about the international actions on housing that will take place on March 28 in many cities in Europe. In the Netherlands, this is done through a demonstration in Amsterdam that starts at 2:00 PM on the JD Meijerplein (Dokwerker).
On the evening on March 10 we will further explain what is going to happen in Germany, where the activities of housing companies are drastically curtailed by action movements and political decisions that respond to it. An expert from Vonovia's tenants' organizations there will explain what the (positive) consequences could be, which could also help us here. On that evening we will also explain what has been researched so far about the 'Luxembourg' purchases of CBRE and its associates.
So: Tuesday 10 March: 16:00 Gustav Mahlerlaan/South Station
and/or 20:00 Cafe Molli Chaoot Van Ostadestraat 55 hs