Camping in September

In Lisbon:

European Housing Action Camp 2018 | 21 – 25.09.2018 | Lisbon

Join the struggle against the marketisation of housing and the exploitation of residents across Europe! Hands off our homes, no more evictions ! No more speculation! Housing is not a market, housing is more than a right!

Get organised for the European Housing Action Camp in Lisbon this September! The European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City brings together activist collectives from all over Europe, and is organising a European Housing Action Camp between the 21st and the 25th of September 2018 in Portugal. The Camp is open to those who want to defend our cities, houses and inhabitants from the hands of the market and speculation.

We’ll be organising workshops for action, and discussion about current fights for housing rights, exchanging knowledge and skills about our different struggles and activist practices. During the five days, we are planning a mix of debates, workshops, discussions, a cultural programme and action! Struggles are emerging across the continent, and we need spaces to connect, learn from each other, and build relationships strong enough to create a housing movement across nationality or tenure.

The European Housing Camp is free and open to all who are interested. Tenants, slum/ self-built neighborhoods dwellers, victims of inadequate housing, victims of eviction or those affected by indebtedness, activists, squatters and neighbourhood-initiatives: Gather and join the meeting!

For more information about the programme and/or the registration for accommodation and food please mail: housing@riseup.net. A small travel subsidy may be available for participants if they register in good time.

Commodification and speculation in housing, gentrification, exploitative housing policies and the lack of affordable places to live are all constant features of our lives, and have become the basis of a widespread debate about the right to housing and to the city across Europe. Migrants, workers, women, pensioners, youth, ethnic minorities, and other marginalised people are the most directly affected by the consequences of such neoliberal takeover of our cities. Housing issues and neoliberal urban policies are two sides of the same coin, reinforcing spatial segregation, inequality and processes of domination based on gender, class and race.

That’s why we want to provide an open space to exchange, network and discuss about urban struggles and housing needs, to raise the visibility of not only of the ongoing housing crises all over Europe, but also the struggles of its people. We claim our right to housing, and we say hands off our homes! Hands Off our Cities!

https://housingnotprofit.org/en/news/view/european-housing-action-camp-2018-21-25-09-2018-lisbon

In Prague:

Everybody has a right to the city!
Kolektiv115 and Altenburg 1964 presents:

Urban camp on critical urban discussion, 27th – 29th September 2018, Prague
Our cities are running away from us under our arms. They were seized by the capital, speculation,
one-sided profits, motoring domination, market and a necessity to adapt its principles and
requirements. Housing in a city is slowly becoming a luxury for a few and the most successful one´s,
the space for creativity is becoming meritory, decision making about the urban space lies still more
only in hands of those, who can afford it. The political representation of a city serves in the vein of
time to the investors, prepares deregulation of planning and the city is going to become even more a
domain for appraising and investing. Urban space reflects the societal processes as a cummulated
social geography. Still thinner group of the rich on one side and still broader group of the poor and
precarized on the other side.

Right to the city has become a fundamental frame of current urban activism. We want to find
inspiration in it and together we want to face the pressure of dominant aspirations of actors in the
urban space. We want to have cities, where it´s affordable to live for everybody. We want to ride our
bicycles in cities with no persecution and ostracism and we want it to become a common way of
transport. We want the right for every inhabitant of a city to take part in decision making about its
appearance, and we want such decision making not to be conditioned only by concrete investment
intentions. We want to bring new life to empty houses and to bring shelter to everybody, who needs
it. We want a creative space, not a dead city!

Right to the city is way more than a invdividual freedom of approach to urban resources; it´s a right
to change ourselves through transformation of cities. Furthermore, it´s rather collective than
individual right, because such transformation is inevitably connected with application of collective
power on reorganisation of the urbanisation processes. The freedom of re-creation of our cities and
ourselves at the same time is one of the most valuable but also most neglected human rights. The
right to the city relates to the creative need of a human being to form and re-create its environment,
the place, where it lives. We want to use our creative force and together with you face the alienation
of a city. Because everyone has a right to the city!

Camp “Right to the city”

In the term of 27th – 29th September a non-profit weekend festival focused on urban activism and
theory will take place in Prague. Together with experts, activists and firstly with the inhabitants of
the city we would like to discuss the possibilities of participation of people on the city´s appearance
and public space.

The event will look similarly as a small musical festival/camp. There will be a place for public activities
(big circus tent for lectures, seminars and workshops), small tent city and part of the activities will
také place also on the boat Altenburg 1964, which will bring also social facilities and space for
refreshments. We want to create the camp participatively – part of the programme will be created
also by its visitors. The form of the camp should also help to create neighbourly or community
atmosphere and show options of self-governance in a public space.

The aim of the festival is a public discussion about a city, in which we´d like to live and also
participation and self-organisation of inhabitants, so they´d be able to take bigger part in decision
making about the environment, where they live

Preliminary programme:

1) Lectures, discussions, public plenaries, workshops on:
– right to the city – the theoretical concept
– housing – how to solve the unavailibility of housing in Prague and inspiration from
abroad
– community centres and social projects – examples, theory and praxis
– urban gardening – re-creation of housing blocks, community gardens etc.
– urban planning and public participation – new spatial plan of Prague and its risks
– panel discussion – post-socialist cities and neoliberal transformation (the case of
Prague)
– radical walks in ubran gentrified spaces
– happening – public space as a place for statements of inhabitants
– traffic – current problems, international inspiration, sustainability
…space is opened to further ideas on lectures/workshops
2) Accompanying cultural programme – music, theatre, performance
3) Children´s corner, cyclo-workshop, vegan food & drinks
Participants: We expect there will be about 100 people taking part in the whole camp and we
expect (hopefully) hundreds of visitors
Place: The boat Altenburg 1964 and surroundings (Prague – Holešovice)
Entry fee and finances: The whole festival is non-profit, entry fee will be free for everybody.
We will ask for donations for full time participants. At this point we are asking for financial
support of donors and foundations.

Facebook page of the event

In Boston:

YIMBY TOWN FESTIVAL

YIMBYtown is a three-day gathering for grassroots community organizers, political leaders, educators, and everyday people to identify problems, create solutions, share resources on the issues that impact housing on local, state, and national levels.
Boston YIMBYtown’s goal is to establish a model of organizing that builds bridges to new allies, promotes racial diversity and equity, and wins housing campaigns.

Last year’s guests included reps from the following groups:

    • A Better Cambridge — Cambridge, Massachusetts
    • Abundant Housing LA — Los Angeles, California
    • Abundant Housing Vancouver — Vancouver, British Columbia
    • AURA — Austin, Texas
    • House Sacramento — Sacramento, California
    • Livable Newton — Newton, Massachusetts
    • London YIMBY — London, England
    • Open New York — New York, New York
    • MSPyimby — Minneapolis & St. Paul, Minnesota
    • Portlanders for Parking Reform — Portland, Oregon
    • Portland for Everyone — Portland, Oregon
    • Santa Cruz YIMBY — Santa Cruz, California
    • Seattle for Everyone — Seattle, Washington
    • SF YIMBY — San Francisco, California
    • Sightline Institute — Seattle, Washington