Greece: thousands face eviction

Submitted by Matthew on 8 January, 2014 - 11:06

A law restricting evictions in Greece expired at the end of 2013.

The law said before eviction many things must be taken into account, and mortgage repayments can be adjusted to 30% of income for 48 months, giving some protection from seizure and auction for the debtor’s principal residence.

The law protected about 180,000 households from eviction. In December 27,000 eviction orders were pending but frozen, and about 100,000 families were at risk of losing their homes.

About 1.5 million households have taken loans, and about one million mortgages. 84 % of those have difficulty in repaying the loans.

23% of mortgages (about 200,000) already have payments overdue.

Even before the law expired, in 2013, tax officials did not hesitate to auction even unemployed people’s homes even for small tax debts. In October 2013, the tax authorities auctioned off 1,553 homes and properties.

The European Union authorities overseeing Greece’s austerity “memoranda” consider the rate of home ownership in Greece to be unsustainably high.

In 2006 it was the highest rate in the EU, 84.6% (well above the average of 64%). The rate fell to 80.1% in 2010 and 75% in 2013.

Over decades, the lack of social housing policy, the rise of construction activity as the “growth engine” of Greek capitalist development, and a ready supply of mortgage loans, prompted many working-class families to buy their homes.

That trend accelerated during the 1996-2008 period of “banking Keynesianism” (relatively easy credit).

An increase in property taxes for ordinary homeowners have changed things. Property taxes have risen under the Memoranda from 487 million euros in 2010 to 2.75 billion euros in 2013.

Second properties owned by many middle-class people to supplement their income have become burdens, and vulnerable to seizure, as there are often no tenants to pay the rent.

The government promises that it will exempt the most impoverished householders from repossessions.

It presents the auctioning-off of debtors’ properties as justice being done against rich Greeks who refuse to pay their mortgages at the expense of the Greek people, a response to “the damage created by systematic non-payers who have money but do not pay their housing/mortgages - damage that is passed on to the banks and which all of us have to pay for”.

But the government is not talking about the large loans granted to build the Athens Concert Hall, money never to be seen again.

Nor about the bourgeois parties which all took advances of grants and loans, money never to be seen again.

Nor the loans that the Greek state has handed over to big subcontractors, media barons, etc.

The government is talking about working-class and poor people in houses worth up to 200,000 euros.

Vulture funds are buying up defaulted mortgages from banks at big discounts and hope to profit from speculation or from auctions.

Desperation, despair, and individual isolation will dominate everywhere, if the left and the labour movement do not rise on the occasion to build a militant movement against these repossessions.

The labour movement and the left must co-organise the struggle in the communities and the workplaces,

20 collectives in the Attica region (round Athens) are undertaking joint actions through the Coordination Collective of Attica. The same is being done in many other areas. The first results are encouraging. Auctions have been halted in Perama, Kifissia, Heraklion, Crete, and Lesvos.

There is a need for a mass movement of civil disobedience which organises squatting of empty houses and defends the right to good housing for all.

The experience of the Spanish movement against repossessions is invaluable. There, 420,000 families have had their homes repossessed in the last five years, but a dynamic movement has prevented 700 auctions.

In order for the battle against the government plans to repossess houses to be victorious it must become part of the political struggle for the overthrow of Samaras and its memorandum politics, and it must have radical anti-capitalist demands and practices.

• No home allowed to fall into the hands of the bankers! Mass mobilisation outside each home facing a threat of eviction.

• Housing is a right for all, Greeks, immigrants, and refugees.

• Utilisation of empty properties (thousands of empty properties are owned by municipalities, churches, public bodies). A public body under workers’ management and control to ensure social housing on the basis of people’s needs

• Abolition of all taxes on primary residences of up to 140 sq.m. and abolition of property taxes on all properties that do not generate income.

• Write off debts for poor households and the unemployed.

• Nationalisation of the banking system under workers’ and social management and control, to be the vehicle for public investment and social needs.

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