Today, 1st of June, we stop paying rent and go on rent strike. To us, it is not reasonable in any way to pay for premises we are prohibited from using for what we have rented them for. The property owner has mislead us and dissuaded us from applying for the building permit and is now using the absence of the permit as a way of punishing us for our gentrification critique in connection with the street festival last autumn.

Kontrapunkt is important for Malmö! We have invested eight years in building up the large cultural and social activities we have today. Of course we want to continue in the premises we have built with so much love, creativity and hard work. They are a prerequisite for everything we do and we want to be able to continue for a long time to come. But the 15th of May we were forced to close down all activities at Västanforsgatan and at the moment, our future is uncertain.

The harsh reality is that we cannot pay the rent if we cannot run our activities. But we cannot accept that someone wants to silence us as a condition of continuing to rent out premises to us either.

Therefore we have today decided to go on a rent strike until we have reached an agreement we can accept and until our landlord Eroom Properties AB take their part of the responsibility for this situation. We demand:

A rental relationship free from limitation of the freedom of speech

It is neither a serious nor a reasonable approach that the continuation of a rental relationship should be conditional upon us accounting for how we position ourselves to the next NGBG street festival or any other event or societal issue. We pay our rent and contribute with a large cultural and social value to the area and to Malmö. That should be enough.

Eroom takes the necessary actions to make it possible for our activities to continue

Eroom takes the actions necessary to obtain a permanent building permit for Kontrapunkt’s activities according to the description which follows from the rental contracts and pays for this process. Kontrapunkt does not have to pay rent until the process is completed and the activities can be resumed.

No retroactive rent rise and a reasonable rise for 2017

Eroom drops the demand of a retroactive rent rise for the years 2012-2016. We have had a good cooperation during those years which both parties have been satisfied with and which has been the base for raising the rents by only CPI every year.

The rent raise by indexation clauses in the contracts is valid from 2017 and it is raised on basis of what has been charged and paid in December 2016, not on basis of theoretically accumulated raises from 2012-2016 which never have been levied.

What has happened?

Since our statement about gentrification in connection to the NGBG street festival was published last year, (of which Eroom was one of the organizers), the owner Kwame Moore has repeatedly said that he does not want us to stay in the premises, both to us and all others who are willing to listen. At the end of last year, he threatened with prohibiting us to have cultural events if we would not give a written explanation how we position ourselves to future street festivals in the area and promise not to work against him. We did not want to accept this and as a consequence the pressure on us and our activities has continued and increased in intensity during winter and spring.

In December, Eroom sent a demand of a retroactive rent rise of almost half a million swedish crowns which they said they had forgotten to levy for the last four years and shock raised the rent for 2017. With the help of our lawyer, we have contested this and since January, we have instead paid the rent raise we consider to be appropriate according to the contract while depositing the rest with the authorities.

In relation to the anonymous report of Nattöppet (a night-open meeting place for homeless people), the City Planning Office found in their inspection that both premises we rent at Västanforsgatan lack building permits. The zoning permit for the property allows gathering and association activities but there was no building permit for the individual activities, which is required. When the previous building permits had expired, we did not get any information about this and all the time it has been our property owner Eroom who had had all the contact with the City Planning Office. Eroom had earlier assured us that our activities did not need any permit as it was within the new zoning permit. Moreover, in 2015, we have rented one of the premises under false pretenses that it would be approved as an event venue despite the fact that we now found out that this permit had already expired in 2011.

In order to avoid a fine, Eroom has now prohibited us from having any association activities in the premises at Västanforsgatan and on the 15th of May, we were forced to cancel all activities including: asylum advice, people’s kitchen, freeshop and food bank, all planned cultural events, meetings and other association activities. As Eroom says that all of this is our responsibility, we are facing a situation where we have to pay high rents while it is us who have to apply for the building permit, pay for the process and the necessary adjustments in the premises whilst at the same time not being able to make money to pay for all this.

We are one of Eroom’s biggest tenants and during the years we have been paying many millions of crowns in rent. Almost all our income has been going to rent as we consider a fixed place to be a prerequisite for being able to develop good and stable activities and to build a strong and sustainable organization. While almost all our money we got went to our landlord, we have run both the cultural events and the social activities on donated resources and voluntary work.

We are convinced that both the cultural and the social activities have been important and meant a lot for Malmö. And all this is threatened now. We hope for a constructive solution which means that we can continue in these premises. But we are also looking for temporary places to continue the social activities during this time.

We will continue fighting for this place but one thing is certain: we are not only a place – we are a movement! Together we are strong!

—— MORE INFORMATION ——

What do we mean by rent strike?

Instead of paying the rent to Eroom Properties AB, we have deposited it with the authorities while waiting for a solution to the conflict.

The reason for withholding the rent is that the property owner’s actions limit our right to use the premises – i.e. we think that the property owner has acted in a way which prevents us from running the activities we have rented the premises for. He has done this by renting out one of the two premises under false pretenses that parties were allowed to be held there, despite the building permit having expired four years before. Earlier, he has also dissuaded us from contacting the City Planning Office in order to apply for a building permit in the other premises as it was included within the new zoning plan, something we trusted in being correct as it has all the time been him taking care of this kind of processes.

Earlier statements

www.kontrapunktmalmo.net/property-owner-forcing-kontrapunkt-to-close-down/

www.kontrapunktmalmo.net/en-liten-uppdatering (in Swedish)