The current climate crisis is compounded, among other things, by the high level of construction activity in Switzerland and the growing use of land for housing. Instead of extending buildings and renovating them to make them more energy-efficient (which would be urgently necessary), a high level of demolition and new construction activity is being pursued, especially in metropolitan areas. Paradoxically, this exacerbates the housing crisis, as cheap housing disappears and is replaced with expensive housing. This leads to the systematic suppression of low and medium-income households from cities and an increasing social polarization between people who are lucky enough to own a charitable home and those who depend on market rents. The drivers behind this are primarily profit-oriented, institutional owners (banks, insurance companies, pension funds, global investors) whose logic is not prevented by the current legal situation, but rather promoted.
Adjustments to the legal and planning framework are urgently needed to give cities in particular greater levers to take action against the housing crisis. Initial ideas are being implemented, for example by granting municipalities a pre-emption right, by regulating institutional owners (e.g. obliging them to provide cheap housing) or by complying with the applicable tenancy law (rather than further undermining it) or even routinely reviewing it. We also consider it important to think again about land reform.
The problem: The relevant laws are not at municipal level, where pressure and political will are strongest. The Construction Act is regulated by the cantons and the tenancy law is regulated nationally. Such projects therefore depend on civil governments and conservative voter base. As a result, well-intentioned political levers regularly fail outside the cities — even if the legislative proposals are not mandatory but formulated in such a way that each municipality can decide for itself whether it wants to implement it or not. It has long been foreseeable that the problem will increasingly affect communities outside large cities: Be it due to rising land and rental prices and/or due to increased housing shortages in surrounding communities due to people who have to move away from cities. But: Changes in this topic are strongly influenced emotionally and normatively.
There our idea comes into play. We would like to start a tour to find out, in conversation with a conservative voter base outside the big cities, what factual, emotional, social, financial,... hurdles exist against further political levers. In doing so, we deliberately want to explore more radical approaches (e.g. land reform or expropriations for the common good), but reformist ideas (pre-emption law, regulation, tenancy control) can also be negotiated. In this way, we want to understand what motivates the no voters to say no and, conversely, where their mobilization potential for such ideas lies.
Our long-term vision is to mainstream supposedly more radical political ideas such as land reform. A the way, we need knowledge of what the hurdles are and what the biggest levers would be. As a first step, we will use mutual understanding.
Methodically, we therefore focus on direct conversation:
- in personal surveys at central locations outside big cities, e.g. in municipalities that voted no to important proposals
- in door calls at houses owned by Credit Suisse. Here it would be exciting to ask the residents' opinions on the “Expropriate CS Real Estate Funds” campaign, provided that the residents were not already part of the campaign
- https://cs-immobilien-enteignen.ch
- in focus groups and/or surveys with specific target groups
- Possibly also with exponents from opposing organizations