Forced Evictions - Logics, Practices and Vulnerabilities in the Context of De-Rentalization Processes in Times of Polycrisis.

• Applicant: Dr. Sarah Klosterkamp
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 528992907

Over the past decade, extensive research has documented a world-wide housing crisis. This crisis has recently been exacerbated by the global pandemic and associated wage shortfalls, the international impact of the Russian war on Ukraine, rising ancillary housing costs, and an inflationary devaluation of net wages in quantitative (too little housing), economic (too high net cold rents) as well as legal terms (withdrawal of the Mietpreisbremse). These current developments and observations are the starting point of the project, which examines the logics of so-called forced evictions and de-renting processes. It will show how housing is taken away from unwelcome tenants by means of the law and to what extent these processes are guided by maintenance or valorization logics on the part of those who own or manage real estate. In doing so, it focuses on hitherto underexposed areas of critical urban research, which in recent years has been predominantly centered on an explanation of gentrification and displacement processes, their underlying regulatory and political-economic mechanisms, neoliberal urban (sub)policies, the crisis of rural areas, and the increasing financialization of the real estate market. So far, little attention has been paid to the institutional-legal instances that translate the various urban displacement mechanisms and exclusions in the context of affordable housing into legal practice on a daily basis. Empirically, this is investigated in the project on the one hand, at the judges' desks in the courtrooms of German district courts, in which those who, due to rent increases after modernization, crisis-related payment arrears, or loss of wages after a long illness, receive their legally effective eviction titles and thereby are confronted with those who, as landlords, approve of or force this process of displacement - or who, as judges, could mitigate or prevent it. On the other hand, the project also takes a look at the side of portfolio management and profitability strategies of the parties who own and manage real estate by conducting interviews with interest groups and visiting real estate fairs and workshops for landlords, where these logics and de-renting practices can be traced and understood. The project will thereby provide important insights into the crucial question of who are the people who are being evicted on a daily basis, which circumstances are guiding these processes, and how, in the context of bureaucracies and in times of multiple crises, structural inequalities and vulnerabilities in housing are further exacerbated along the categories of age, gender, income, and nationality.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants