Housing - a basic human need

About the commitment of Care Revolution Rhein-Main and its background

One of the central framework conditions of care relationships is the housing situation. In Frankfurt, a prime example of disinhibited capitalism, this is an important issue for care activists. A report by Elfriede Harth(here also as PDF)

Housing - a basic human need

As Care Revolution activists in the Rhine-Main regional group, the issue of housing is quite high on our list of priorities. This is because people who are dependent on care work, work in care professions and cannot delegate care work due to a lack of financial resources are particularly affected by the worsening housing crisis. Housing has become an important sector of rentier capitalism[1], i.e. it is primarily intended to generate profits and satisfy the interests of shareholders.

In terms of the cost of living, Frankfurt is in third place in Germany, which is due to the high rents. This is one of the main reasons why 65% of people who work in Frankfurt live away from home. This also includes people who work in a care profession: carers, educators, hospital staff, cleaners, etc.. These are all professions that deal directly with people and the human body, i.e. they require proximity and cannot be performed remotely. They are part of the lower-paid labour force, either because these jobs are less well paid or because they are so strenuous that many people cannot afford to work full-time, or because these people still have so many private care responsibilities that they can only sell a small amount of their time in order to earn a living. The majority of these care workers are women. Greetings from the gender pay gap and the gender pension gap[2]! The distance from the workplace means unpaid commuting time that has to be saved elsewhere, it is life time. Not to mention the environmental damage that is (or can be) caused by transport. Affordable flats in Frankfurt are in short supply and are becoming increasingly so. And there are empty apartment blocks and office blocks that could be converted into affordable housing.

Around 52% of households in Frankfurt consist of just one person. This includes many households of older people who have lived in Frankfurt for a large part of their lives and for whom their familiar surroundings are particularly important. And housing is not just about having a roof over your head, but also, and especially in old age, the feeling of being at home, of belonging. Not being discarded as a burden.

Of course, a city changes over time, but this change must not be left to "the market" - and that now means rentier capitalism - but opportunities must be created for those affected to help shape the change, so that decisions are not made over their heads, but that their needs are taken into account. Care councils are needed in which the important issue of housing is a central part of the agenda.

For example, we have supported actions in which long-standing tenants have been given notice and evicted from their homes in order to make changes that they could not agree to because they would have suffered unjustified major disadvantages. Or because they were branded as resisters against gentrification or similar projects and bullied. Forced evictions are simply not a solution. However, it is (still) a battle of David against Goliath.

Because Frankfurt, like many other cities in Germany, has "left the issue of housing to the market". And because Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region in general is an important economic centre, as a banking city and with one of the most important airports on the European continent, with companies in the creative industries, IT and telecommunications, biotechnology and life sciences, logistics and still industry, the population is growing continuously and with it the need for housing.

But the city has completely neglected social housing, even though there are three housing associations, most of which are publicly owned. The number of flats that fall out of the social housing programme far exceeds the number of new flats built. And construction is taking place, including by the publicly owned housing associations, particularly for the high-priced market.

This is why we have joined the Rent Madness Hesse alliance and support all the actions that are initiated there. At present, for example, we are trying to influence the legislation planned by the new black-red coalition in the state of Hesse on housing construction in order to create affordable housing. In this way, the money spent on housing benefit can be invested in housing construction. After all, housing benefit is nothing more than a subsidy for landlords and a measure that also causes high bureaucratic costs due to the associated needs assessment, which could also be saved and invested in housing construction or, even better, in the renovation and modernisation of existing properties. And the number of vacancies ("don't touch my property!") is frightening.

As care activists, the housing needs of families and people with disabilities, i.e. people with a particularly high need for private or professional care work, are of particular concern to us. Large family-friendly flats are very rare. 12% of households in Frankfurt consist of at least four people. Most of these are families with children. High-priced flats are usually very spacious. This is because the richer a household, the more space is required. But many families with family members who are prohibited from working because they have children and underage teenagers have to feed more mouths with the adults' income. And often the greater the number of family members, the greater the need for unpaid care work, making it more difficult for one of the two adults in the family to work full-time in a paid job. That is, if there are two adults and not just one. And it is almost always women, namely the mothers, who are penalised by the gender pay gap and gender pension gap. But the whole family also suffers because large, family-friendly flats are rare and very rarely affordable. As a result, many families have to make do with scarce living space, which was particularly burdensome in times of coronavirus, for example.

The situation is similar for people with disabilities. On the one hand, these are families with a physically impaired child who needs accessibility, or older people who can no longer live on upper floors, for example, if there is no lift in the building. There are far too few such flats. That is why we are campaigning for an undeveloped plot of land in the middle of a popular district of Frankfurt (Bornheim) to be developed with barrier-free flats and possibly one or two larger family-friendly flats. Only such a project should be authorised.

We are currently living in a time of upheaval. The growing climate crisis is forcing us to rethink and change many things. Industrialisation caused the separation of gainful employment and the home. With the emergence of the "factory", a place where many wage earners came together to earn a living for most of the day by performing an externally determined activity, the home became a place of - mostly nocturnal - recreation, a place of "reproduction" of what could be marketed to secure a livelihood, namely one's own labour power. The home is the most important place for private, unpaid care work.

In the period after the Second World War, the car became the engine of the economic miracle, especially in Germany. Urban development was fully geared towards this, resulting in a kind of ghettoisation of the various areas of life. Whereas factory workers had previously lived within walking distance of the factory, suburbs could now develop in which people "lived", then industrial districts, shopping centres, etc., which were often far apart but easily accessible by car. The size of households decreased, the number of single-person households increased. And the need for housing grew accordingly, along with increasing isolation, anonymisation and mobility. All of this went hand in hand with a growing consumption of resources, as each flat needed its own kitchen with all the associated appliances and electrical devices (fridge, cooker, dishwasher, microwave, etc.) as well as a bathroom, washing machine, tumble dryer, etc..

In addition to the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine triggered an energy crisis. The need to rethink housing policy can no longer be put off. The consumption of fossil fuels must be reduced and energy must be saved in general, not only in homes but also in terms of mobility. This applies, for example, to long commutes and individual car traffic.

Infrastructure for public services of general interest must be sufficiently close by. (Keyword: the city of the quarter of an hour - https://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/DE/forschung/programme/refo/staedtebau/2023/stadt-der-viertelstunde/01-start.html ) This saves precious time, especially for private care work (shopping, childcare and education, visits to the doctor and other daily errands of modern life).

More and more shared housing projects are now being developed in Frankfurt. People are forming communities in order to live together more sustainably. One such project is the NIKA House near Frankfurt's main railway station. With the support of the tenants' syndicate, it was taken off the housing market and converted into flats of various sizes in which individuals and families could live together. Not next to each other, but with each other. This rationalised the use of certain household appliances: Not every household now needed a washing machine, which took up space in a bathroom or kitchen more often unused than used, but washing machine sharing was introduced. On the ground floor, there was a space open to the street that was made available to progressive groups and initiatives in the city to enable them to meet and think about social transformations and plan actions.

Right at the start of the project, our Care Revolution regional group was invited to discuss how certain care activities could be organised fairly. In particular, the cleaning of communal areas, stairs, the cellar etc. was on the agenda. What standards of cleanliness and tidiness should be adopted, who would take responsibility for this, etc.? It was actually the responsibility of every resident of the building, at least from a certain age. Were cleaning schedules the solution? But it was noticed that there was a financial disparity between the residents, because some had a job that gave them a high income, while others - actually one person - only had a precarious income. Shouldn't the opportunity be taken to create a formal job for the precarious person that would provide them with a secure income? Or pay them a lower rent?

We proposed a different model: Hygiene standards had to be set jointly. And all adults should find the time to do the necessary care work. However, if someone considered their own employment so important that they were not prepared to reduce the time they spent on it in order to do their own share of care work, then they should not buy someone else's labour at a certain market price (the set wage) in order to delegate their own care work to them. Instead, he or she should buy the time saved by not doing their own care work from the "replacement person". And at the hourly rate that they themselves would earn by doing their much-valued paid work. In this way, unpaid care work would not become a commodity that could be sold at a fixed price, but someone would buy their time. And at the market price at which their own time was traded on the market. This would make it transparent that some people's time is worth more on the market than other people's time. But that unpaid care work is not a commodity, but a necessary activity like breathing or sleeping, for which everyone must take the necessary time. That is why the conditions must be created to make this possible.

We are living in a time of upheaval. Climate crisis: energy crisis, digital revolution, demographic change, growing social inequality, wars, etc... we need to think together about how we want to live so that everyone has a good life. So that everyone's basic needs are met. For example, when it comes to housing. Housing in our city. As active members of the Care Revolution network, this is one of our fields of action. With the aim of shaping a care-centred society.

[1] Rentier capitalism: an economy that is centred on the exploitation of investments from extensive financial assets. Similar: financial market capitalism (ed.)

[2] Gap in wage income or pensions between men and women (ed.)