Claim of responsibility for attacks on real estate agencies, Airbnb and My Flat buildings

From Act for Freedom Now! - Athens, Greece

Claim of responsibility for attacks on real estate agencies, Airbnb and My Flat buildings

In a world where all goods, material and non-material, are slowly being commodified in the most brutal and cynical way, it was only a matter of time before we saw a coordinated effort by the State and capital to transform our basic needs into class privileges.

Alongside the privatisation of electricity and water supplies, we are witnessing the invasion of large real estate investors in the centre of Athens, who are trading properties at an uncontrolled pace and these are basically included in short-term rental platforms. This has resulted in thousands of people being displaced from their homes either due to inability to cope with rent increases, or through evictions, or forced relocations as the owner chooses selling or Airbnb.

In short, in an attempt to squeeze every possible perspective of profit out of our neighbourhoods, houses are being converted into tourist accommodation and of course the local city is being reshaped to adapt to the new needs of the neighbourhood… Hipster shops of all kinds are springing up all around to sell the neighbourhood lifestyle to eager consumers while we see our squares and parks being choked with their shops and tables.

A similar process is happening with student rooms, where, based on a classic state tactic of promoting privatisation, they degrade public structures to a tragic extent so that investors appear who build private dormitories and profit handsomely from students who stay in them or do not fight for public ones. In this context, companies such as My Flat are squeezing students and their families, renting out their rooms-coops in their private “student dormitories”, with their showcase “safe controlled” environment with security cameras and digital entry recording.

The State, of course, plays a very critical and clear role in all of the above. By choosing which neighbourhoods it wants to redevelop, by promoting development and gentrification that means nothing more than the displacement of the poorest strata to make room for the rich and tourists. By promoting the real estate market to foreign investors, in the name of national development and by enacting laws that pave the way for the auctions that are already taking place, they are creating the ideal conditions for the city to be transformed into an endless tourist park.

Whenever we hear about redevelopment, we know full well that it comes with control and surveillance. Police patrols in the housing estates are increasing significantly, while streets and squares are filled with security cameras to protect the new properties and ensure the smooth movement of capital.

In this context, we take responsibility for the attack with heavy tools and paint, as well as the writing of slogans between June 1-13:

• in the My Flat buildings in Daphne and Agios Ioannis
• at the real estate agency “Real Estate Now” in Kato Patisia
• at the real estate agency specializing in Airbnb “Dorothy’s Apartments” in Kypseli
• in the wake of Israeli interests in Neapoli Exarchia
• in the Airbnb luxury accommodation complex “The Rooster’s Egg” as well as the adjacent building that has just been renovated and is intended for the same use in Kypseli

We are not going to let our homes become hotels or our neighbourhoods become shopping malls. We are organizing class-based and from below in every neighbourhood and we are sabotaging in many ways any movement that tries to impose the sterile and dystopian reality of power on us.

Redevelopment means impoverished displaced people

Anarchists

———–

via: athens.indymedia

Translated by Act for freedom now!

 

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Reader (not verified) Fri, 07/04/2025 - 10:37

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