Welcome to the second article of our series on Postgrowth and Housing. Last time we looked closer at the role of housing in the accumulation of capitalism, as well as the potential of collaborative housing to become an alternative to such extractive processes by enabling processes of commoning. Today, we will delve deeper into a concrete example of a collective struggle to establish a housing cooperative and all that it entails. Many thanks to Kas, a member of SUP who shared their knowledge and experience with this process.
Author: Agata Guńková
SUP and its history
Based in Amsterdam, SUP is a group of artists, researchers, teachers, designers, healthcare workers, engineers and dancers. They are a collective of many enthusiastic, yet currently tired, cultural workers united around a building at Surinameplein 35. Together, they have the aim of establishing a housing cooperative in a building where they resided for 10 years. Their goal is to create a permanently affordable home for residents and a non-commercial space for neighbours. Yet, the future of their struggles is currently unknown.
To explain the origins of their story, it is important to look at the history of the building at Surinameplein. It dates back to the 1960s, when it was established as an elderly house. At the turn of the century, it was converted into a rehabilitation clinic for people with mental health issues. Finally, it stood empty before being acquired by the current building owner Vesteda, together with a bundle of many other buildings in the neighbourhood. Vesteda is a corporate landlord which owns property in small and large cities in the Netherlands. The company manages over 28 000 homes and owns nearly 10 billion euros worth of property in the Dutch real estate market, earning 399 million euros yearly in gross income from renting property. However, as we can read on its website, it strives to be more than just a property owner, but also a “a trusted home investor and landlord with a social and sustainable mission”. The company’s guiding principle is ‘Housing as a force for good’ and the investors in the company are mainly Dutch insurers and pension funds.
While Vesteda is the building’s owner, the management of the space has been in the hands of Urban Resort, a so-called professional non-profit organisation. Under the management of Urban Resort, the SUP building has been converted into a “broedplaats”, a temporary housing and studio project for starting artists. This type of housing, set up under the Dutch Empty Building Law (Leegstandwet), aims to provide empty spaces around the city as a “breeding ground” for creative projects. Over the 10 years, the building has turned into a space for artists, but most importantly a home to over 180 people, who have at some point lived in SUP and built a community together.
Temporary stay and struggle for co-operative living
The nature of a “broedplaats” is temporary, as the building is intended for new purposes in the future and can only be resided on this type of contract for 10 years. Residents of SUP were therefore aware of the precarity of their stay within the building, and since their fifth year at SUP began receiving yearly rental extensions, most commonly only two before they were expected to be evicted. However, due to the value which the building held for them, a group of residents decided to organise and attempt to turn the temporary housing project into a permanent one. They gained support from a network of housing cooperatives, housing experts and began a negotiation with the building owner over the potential buy-out of the house which was their home. Ultimately, the goal was not only to keep a place to live, but also to be able to collectively create a space for the wider neighbourhood, by holding different public cultural events or setting up a garden.
However, their efforts were not successful, as despite an initial interest, Vesteda ceased all communications with the group and refused to further engage in conversation about the potential buy-out of the space. This occurred only shortly after SUP members had spent over three months on an intensive process of securing funds, institutional partners and a detailed professional project plan, which Vesteda requested in initial communication. In 2024 it became increasingly clear that the eviction notice was a final one, as it was the tenth year of the project, and it was in fall of that year that the last residents were evicted. While most residents moved out voluntarily with the final day of their lease, some stayed behind and attempted to resist the decision. Their effort was not successful, and the era of a living community at SUP has ended.
Collective organising despite eviction
It can be argued that it is understandable that the stay of SUP residents was only temporary, as Vesteda needed to take care of renovation of the building. However, as former tenant Kas shares, instead of an extensive renewal, so far there have only been minor changes to the building, such as repainting of rooms or the exchange of doors. Instead of a permanent cooperative housing in an unaffordable city, the spaces of SUP are now being rented as artistic workshops, only for a somewhat increased price. As renovation of this large building would probably turn out to be costly, it is more convenient for the company to rent them on a temporary basis again as studios. Due to municipal zoning laws the building is not yet dedicated for permanent living, and the company could therefore not benefit from charging rents in this lucrative location even if an extensive renovation took place now.
Former SUP residents who had to leave their home have often found themselves in a dire situation. As shared by Kas, while some have successfully found a new home, for many this process has turned out to be impossible. A substantial number of former SUP residents continue to live in temporary sublets, while others have moved out of the city or country completely. While the walls of their former rooms have been repainted and labeled unsuitable for residential use, SUP members find themselves in precarious living situations.
Despite the building’s eviction, some of the former residents continue to organise, as they are still committed to buying their former home and establishing a housing cooperative together. The goal is to maintain a non-commercial space for affordable living and working, accessible to the neighbours, something which is increasingly difficult to find within the city. Through collective ownership, the members of SUP wish to secure its long-term accessibility and affordability. These goals are in line with the strategy of the municipality of Amsterdam, which aims for 10% of the Amsterdam housing stock to be composed of housing cooperatives by the year 2040, as well as the vision of the city as a model for the donut economy.
Yet, the future of SUP remains unclear. Members of the co-operative are given many promises without clear actions from various institutional partners, as well as struggle to secure their own housing while they continue working towards a cooperative. Why is it, we can ask, that despite an active community of residents, a vacant building, municipal strategies and efforts for more cooperatives, the members of SUP have weak hopes of moving back to their former home? The answer is simple: profit.
SUP against future corporate profits
Vesteda refuses to further engage in a serious conversation with members of SUP, despite their clear vision, professional renovation plan, support from the municipality and finances for a mortgage from credible banks. After all, why would a for-profit company consider selling a building which can instead be kept with minimal renovation costs and whose value can only be increased in the future? Why should a group of people, whose “creative spirit” has helped to upkeep the building, have any claim on the future of this property?
What we see here is the prime example of commodification, being the domination of economic value over any other sentiments or purpose. In the eyes of a corporate landlord, the building at Surinameplein 35 is a future property gain within a city highly popular with local and foreign investors. The goal of Vesteda is primarily profit, in order to satisfy its investors, emphasizing the financial nature housing plays in today’s cities. While on the company’s website we can read that the company is committed towards “building a liveable city together”, these promises turn empty while profits and investor demands are at stake. No amount of social commitment on the front page of the website can erase the fact that it is primarily a profit driven enterprise dependent on investor’s will.
What residents of SUP are facing is therefore not just the unwillingness of a single company to grant them their wish, but rather a structural problem of cities operating within neoliberal capitalism. While the city of Amsterdam can proclaim their commitment to donut economics and tries to establish new housing cooperatives, the reality is that housing continues to be marketed as a real estate investment, social housing sold off as the city is stuck within a perpetual financialisation.
Culture-led development towards gentrification
In the case of SUP, we can also see that the establishment of “temporary creative grounds” is not made in the spirit of accessibility and prosperity of artists, but rather a formula for gentrification and future profits from rents. While artists might be given a temporary space to live and create, in the long run, their fates cannot be a priority for a corporate owner. Such a process has been extensively researched as a “culture-led development” strategy. Popularised by a book by Richard Florida in the early 2000s, this approach to urban planning highlights the role of the so-called creative class in economic advancement of post-industrial cities. The work of Florida suggests investment into soft qualities of cities that have the potential to enhance the “authenticity” and “cosmopolitanism” of places, such as trendy bars and cafes, festivals or art galleries. The enhancement of the so-called quality of place is then expected to bring along more young talents, competitive businesses and regenerate previously undesirable post-industrial areas.
This approach to urban development benefits from the fact that advocating for investment into art and culture can rarely be perceived as a negative strategy. However, extensive research shows that rarely it is the livelihoods of inhabitants of these places which is the priority of this strategy. Examples from many cities worldwide show that this market-based approach often leads to unleashing of gentrification characterised by spike in rents, displacement of former inhabitants, small shop owners and their replacement by wealthy residents and establishments catering to them. This process is racialized, as it is often migrant communities who are forced to leave their livelihoods. However, artists who are desired for enhancing the “neighbourhood spirit” are often not spared, as they often do not represent the desired “creative elite” which can afford new rents.
Amsterdam is no exception to this story. Culture-led development is a strategy used not only in post-industrial cities, but any neighbourhood which is ridden with “undesirable behaviour” with a potential of creating a business friendly environment that attracts private investment and yields monopoly rent. Research into the Indische Buurt neighbourhood of Amsterdam East shows that the city has invested heavily into rebranding of migrant businesses into spaces of consumption for white middle class and the simultaneous reduction of social housing units, support for owner-occupancy as well as private rentals. As expected, this led to a demographic change within the neighbourhood and gradual suburbanisation of poverty.
The establishment of a “broedplaats” can be read as a similar process of deliberate gentrification. Cultural workers and artists are allowed to reside in a vacant space, however only for a temporary amount of time, after which new developments take place that do not involve local populations nor precarious artists. Of course, it is important to nuance the position of the municipality, which is also investing into community-based developments around the city, as well as establishment of housing cooperatives. Yet, we must ask whether such social and postgrowth goals can exist alongside the entrepreneurial neoliberal city planning.
Are temporary cultural places, such as SUP but also music venues or clubs a good way to compromise rising prices within the city by allowing communities to flourish? Or are they simply paving the way for private landlords to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth and further escalation of property prices, while maintaining the facade of a progressive sustainable city? The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between.
The paradoxes of housing in neoliberal cities
As mentioned in the previous blog, in the current stage of capitalism, housing and property play a more crucial role than ever in accumulation of wealth. While cooperative housing offers a potential form of resistance, the experience of SUP shows us that pursuing this approach can be a lengthy and tiresome process, even within a city where such strategies are proclaimed to be a priority. While members of SUP want to continue their efforts, even with the support of the municipality, the ultimate decision lies within Vesteda. To be able to pursue a postgrowth approach to housing, the municipality thus has to not only reserve a handful of plots in newly built areas for new housing cooperatives, but also actively work to make unused investment buildings available for those who have the willingness and abilities to transform them into accessible spaces. Most importantly, it must also fight the financialisation and commodification of housing, as well as reduction of social housing units in favour of private ownership.
In a growingly unaffordable city, where rents are skyrocketing and homelessness has increased by 22%, it is not the market which can help us solve the dire housing situation. Housing ownership by for-profit companies, which are driven by accumulation to satisfy investors, cannot lead to affordable and just cities, no matter how many sustainable goals they place within their mission statement. The story of SUP shows us that support for bottom-up housing organisations is a rocky road, when single promises such as “more cooperatives” are realised within an inherently neoliberal approach to city management and real estate. Housing must be recognised as a right, rather than investment asset and investments into artistic and cultural spaces must be done with the purpose of establishing more public and accessible spaces.
While cultural workers at SUP were forced to move out, their struggle to preserve Surinameplein 35 as an affordable and accessible space continues. It shows us that there is value in community organising and that even the most neoliberal cities continue to face resistance from those who believe in affordable homes and non-commercial neighbourhood spaces.