Zwangsräumungen Verhindern Wien (stop evictions vienna) is a group that deals with housing and urban policies in Vienna. Housing should not be a commodity. While people have to spend large parts of their monthly income on rent and many people cannot find affordable housing, tens of thousands of apartments in Vienna are empty. Vacancies are speculated with and people are frightened away from their apartments, which in turn are subsequently converted into luxury real estate. 
In addition, estimated 5-7 evictions happen in Vienna every day and half of them in municipal housing. Evictions are the culmination of the capitalist housing market that puts profit over people. Enraged by the precarious reality of life, the desire developed to formulate a systematic critique and to organize collectively against it. 

Our political struggles showed unsurprisingly that marginalized people mostly also live precariously. Be it refugees without residency status, people facing language barriers or, for example, single parents who can’t afford the rent at the end of the month, all are victims of the same exploitative system. Therefore, we want to formulate a radical left critique of the capitalist organized housing market and a city of the rich intersectionally.

In Vienna we try to support tenants in their struggles and to raise awareness in the city about the absurd commercialization of the basic need of housing. Internationally, we are part of the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ with the aim to enter into an exchange about different struggles of other left groups about the right to housing in many different cities, to learn from each other and to support each other. 

Housing for people not profit!