Season 3 Episode 3 - MOVING

Housing is one of the hairiest urban planning questions. You have to get the balance absolutely perfect. If you build too much the cost of upkeep will bankrupt the state. But if you build too little, you’ll have a human crisis on your hands in no time.

Sweden is a case study of this teeter totter, constantly chasing that perfect balance. And the right way to get it is always up for debate.

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Script

Radio Report Quote [Swedish]

[Intro Music]

Jess 00:30

Welcome to Here There Be Dragons. This season, I’m taking you to Stockholm. I’m your host, Jess Myers.

Episode 3: Moving

[Music]

ARVID 00:45

I never lived longer than two years in one place. Since I was 18.

PHILIP 00:50

Before I was eighteen, I moved like ten times.

ARVID 00:54

When you move to a big city, you… especially Stockholm, where it's really really hard to find some place to live you don't- you don't stop and think about how the city is, or the environment around it, because you are… you are trapped in the race just to make it to the end of the month.

Jess 01:21

When I moved to Stockholm, the apartment I lived in was loaned to me for free by the Swedish Art Grants Committee, Konstnärsnämnden . This meant I got to skip a quintessential step of staying in a new city: finding housing. [Sound of unlocking]

[Children playing] I’m someone who has scrounged around for accommodation in many corners of the world. Being scammed, rejected, and fleeced is the norm of moving to me.

But moving to Stockholm was like being chauffeured by the housing fairy directly into the heart of the city, no questions asked. It was so easy I was a little suspicious. Laundry in the building? Balcony with a view? Walking distance from work? Not possible.

There had to be a mistake.

But Stockholmers let me know that, yes, my situation was indeed a fluke. Pure privilege and institutional insulation. For any one of the people I met in the city, living in the apartment I was staying in would have either been a long complicated wait or sheer luck. Housing in Stockholm is complex, which is a soft way of saying… it's a crisis.

Now, I know what you’re gonna say: isn’t that the case for most major cities? Yeah, but Sweden’s entire population could fit in the metro region of Paris. If a city of under 2 million people can’t figure it out. What chance do the rest of us have?

Although Stockholm is facing a problem that’s pretty common, its solutions have always been unique. Like most cities it grapples with the question of whether housing is a human right. So how do you even get a place in the city? Let’s begin at the beginning. Or, more accurately, let’s... get in line. 

[MUSIC]

Jess 03:10

Up until the 90s, the most common form of housing stock in Sweden was public housing. And when I say public housing, I mean it, Housing for the Public, not exclusively for low or middle income residents. For EVERYONE.

NAZEM 03:24

A major reason for that was because most of these housing estates were publicly owned, so it wasn't social housing, it was publicly owned housing, tenants neutral. So anybody could live there.

Jess 03:39

Since the 1920s, Sweden’s national government developed urban experiments, buying up land, and building housing. Basically, the state became the nation’s landlord.

[Marching music]

Sweden’s socialist political party, the Social Democrats, rose to power during this time, and one of their main platforms was crafting the nation’s social safety net. One philosophy that rose from this moment was the idea that housing is a basic human right. 

Remember in the first episode when Gunilla moved to Stockholm?

GUNILLA 04:11

I think already when I went to school, I had only time to pause a big hole, [Bus stopping] which was the city now, was Hertoriet, everything it was just a hole. So you went on bridges and things like that.

Jess 04:30

Much of the development that happened around her was for housing. Housing is one of the hairiest urban planning questions. You have to get the balance absolutely perfect. If you build too much the cost of upkeep could bankrupt the state. But if you build too little, you’ll have a human crisis on your hands in no time. [Doors opening]

Sweden is a case study of this teeter-totter, constantly chasing that perfect balance. And the right way to get it is always up for debate.

ERIK 04:59

Radio Report Quote [Swedish]

The classic question posed to the prime minister was that what would your recommendation be for a young couple moving to Stockholm in order to find housing?

Jess 05:12

Here’s Erik again. He’s the architect and researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He helped us understand the political stakes of the housing crisis back in the 50s and 60s.

ERIK 05:23

His answer was, well, they can get in line, and the reporter said, well, you know, there's 60 or 70,000 people in line, obviously this young couple is not going to get housing.

Jess 05:37

Enter the queue, an ominous presence in the life of many Swedes.

MARIE LOUISE 05:42

The city of Stockholm has this line that I think… last time I checked was maybe 20 years waiting time.

Jess 05:50

When you get to the front of line, you win the jackpot: a lease you can hold for the rest of your life. But waiting can literally take a lifetime, 20 years or even longer.

AHU 06:01

I might be dead by the time my name comes up. I mean maybe.

Jess 06:05

These lines can get so long that Stockholmers used to put their children on the housing queue as soon as they were born, although now the rule is you have to be at least 18 to be on the line.

ARVID 06:15

Started to live in Vauxhall.

MARIE LOUISE 06:17

You know, you put your kids in that line.

ARVID 06:19

And I lived in Solna.

MARIE LOUISE 06:23

When they're born.

ARVID 06:23

I lived in Stureby.

BJORN 06:29

I was like 6 years when I was first put on this queue.

ARVID 06:29

Out in Jakobsberg.

MARIE LOUISE 06:31

And if you're put in that line you will get that apartment by your 30. [Laughing]

ARVID 06:35

A white contract.

MARIE LOUISE 06:36

I'm not sure you can do that anymore… put babies in the line.

ARVID 06:40

I found the place in Björkhagen through a friend.

MARIE LOUISE 06:42

Or if you have to enter the line when you're of age maybe 18 or 20 so you know that changes a lot.

ARVID 06:50

I also found the one in Stureby.

MARIE LOUISE 06:54

The prices are ridiculously high.

ARVID 06:57

The one in Jakobsberg was also through a friend.

MARIE LOUISE 07:00

So it's very hard to enter into the market with an average income.

ARVID 07:04

Everyone I know have lived with a black contract.

MARIE LOUISE 07:08

You need to be at least two or you need to have a very high income.

ARVID 07:11

It's a contract that is not approved by the- company that owns the apartment, so you live there illegal. If someone had found out I would be kicked out on the street. Immediately.

Jess 07:28

And just to make things a little more interesting, the lines also have different categories: ones for students, for residents over 65, ones for people under 26 and so on.

GUSTAV 07:39

Stockholm is full of queues.

Jess 07:41

But the trick of the lines is that you need to know to get on them. For Gustav and Ahu, that was the most difficult part.

GUSTAV 07:47

Uh… I have to find out about queues. If you're a single woman, then there might be a queue. Or you can… you know, and I think it’s like this. Yeah, there's artist's things as well.

AHU 07:58

But now I'm learning that there's privately owned companies that you can get on their… their lists.

GUSTAV 08:06

I'm on the big general queue and I'm on maybe five different private queues for just property developers who have their own queues basically.

For the general one there's a fee of 200 kr per year. but there's no way of telling if you will ever get something out of it I guess.

AHU 08:26

The lease I have now, the contract I have now, I have a second because I’m renting from the owner and so not a management company. But, they can only rent to me every nine months, because I can claim ownership of the house, right? If it's more than that. Every nine months and they have, they give me two months’ notice to vacate.

GUSTAV 08:50

You should be on the queue but I don't know I'll probably have left Stockholm by then I think.

AHU 08:55

So you know it's- part of me doesn't really care, because part of me goes like, I don't want to live here for the rest of my life anyway.

Jess 09:06

The question of where to go and what to do gets even harder when you’re new in town. For Yasmeen, who moved to Stockholm from Somalia after seeking asylum, not having the head start of knowing the rules or even the language left her and her mother scrambling for security.

Their confusion was often met with more suspicion than assistance. When Yasmeen’s mother was no longer qualified for resources for newly arrived asylum seekers, their access to stability fell apart.

YASMEEN 09:37

Difficult is an understatement. Impossible. You can't. Even people who have jobs, who have been living here for a very long time can't find housing, so imagine someone who doesn't have a job, doesn't speak the language. Has nothing to show that she can pay the rent, she will, it's impossible, she can't find a house..

Yeah, there's a housing shortage on top of that. There's like a hierarchy of people who are really excluded from the housing market, which is poor people, immigrants, people who don't speak the language, people who don't have jobs, unemployed people. And my mom falls in that group, like all those categories.

Jess 10:19

So after January what is she going to do?

YASMEEN 10:24

So, she basically can't do anything, she needs to be registered in an address. She's thinking of depending on relatives' kindness for a while, and then see how long that works for her, because the municipality has made it clear that they were not going to do anything about her situation. So… yeah, she doesn't really have a fool-proof plan.

[Music]

Jess 10:56

OK, so here we are on the line. Either we just found out about it, or we’ve been on it since we were born. But until you actually get the apartment, what do you do? Where do you live?

For many Stockholmers the only certain thing about the housing market is precarity and ingenuity. Some immigrants to Sweden pay small sums to rent an “official address.” Some young people study for longer just to maintain student housing.

But many Stockholmers rely heavily on subletting.

ARVID 11:29

You're lucky if you just have a second-hand black contract.

Jess 11:31

And then, sub-subletting. [AHU: “There’s first contract”] And then sub sub subletting. [AHU: "And second contract.”]

AHU 11:40

And the inneboende. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but I think I am because I've been inneboende for a while. Where you rent a room.

Jess 11:44

These arrangements are difficult to come by and often illegal.

ARVID 11:47

You need to know someone.

Jess 11:48

Having a lease is called a first-hand contract. A sublet is a second-hand contract. And that’s not even getting into third-hand contracts, fourth-hand contracts, and all the shady deals that are sometimes the only option.

ARVID 12:03

You need to have some kind of connection to get somewhere- to have somewhere to live. It's not that easy even to get a black contract because you must know someone. And I have friends which have actually bought a black contract and they paid I think it 200,000 kronor just to have access to that black contract. It's not that uncommon so you pay 200,000 kronor and uh if they find out that you live there, you get kicked out on the street immediately.

AHU 12:34

If get a first contract you have it for life. Second contract is like you're renting from the person who has the first contract and then inneboende is a room. So right now I have a second contract.

MARION 12:45

I basically never had a legal contract to stay, like I don't today either. I think I've been super lucky or also like I've, if someone's giving me like a little bit a shady contract, I've been like “oh yeah, that'll work! It's a house, I don't care.” Um, so I think maybe not being too afraid of getting caught or like not being afraid of um people I think, or different odd spots to live.

I've never had a legal contract. I've always lived in where it's like you can't have your mail here, um if someone knocks don't open… Like it's always been that type of situation.

[Rock music]

Jess 13:42

So how did Stockholm get here? Why is it so hard to find stability in the city?

Well, in the 1970s Sweden’s economy went into a recession. Demand for housing dipped, leaving municipalities with no revenue to maintain units.

ERIK 14:00

What most municipalities are left with is a number of empty apartments, so the government has already financed it, and the municipalities have ordered them or asked for them, and the companies have built them, but there's no one moving into them. So in Sedetelya, for example, south of Stockholm, in one of the last areas built during the Million Program in Hovsha, there were apartments that were empty for ten years.

So from 1975 when they were completed to 1985, nobody rented them. And of course, this was a huge strain on the municipal budgets, and in smaller municipalities and counties around Sweden, actually, apartments were torn down, because there was no demand for them.

Jess 14:49

Remember the tricky balance we talked about? That perfect housing ratio? Well, that teeter was tottering.

By the 90s, neo-liberal policies were gaining popularity across the globe. In Sweden, a more conversative coalition ended the Social Democrats near 70-year run of near unilateral power.

One of the key promises that this new administration made was the privatization of public housing. They decided that the only way to re-establish balance was through privatizing.  If the state can’t afford to maintain housing, then just sell housing directly to residents. Then they can take care of it themselves, right? Problem solved? Well… not so fast. 

NASIM 15:34

So the living situation in Stockholm is really, really, really, bad. It's a village but it's pretty complex city and not that friendly…

MARIE LOUISE 15:44

Oh I'm really happy I'm out of that situation, because I think it's absolutely a horrific situation that was going on. It's almost impossible to get a first-hand rental contract.

NASIM 15:57

I mean I have an apartment now. I was in the queue for 18 years to get an apartment in Årsta.

MARIE LOUISE 16:03

The reason for that is that people who has one never let go. They pass it on to their family, and they probably just stay within the rental market. So that they… if they want to move you find somebody to switch apartments with, which is like not an easy task, because nobody can make up their mind in this city. ...I can't deal with that stress.

BJORN 16:31

It was quite hard just to get an apartment, so I left Stockholm for like 2 or 3 years.

And when I came back, my grandmother had died. Her apartment… when they sold it so I got enough money to buy an apartment in Årsta.

Jess 16:50

Buying housing and just taking care of it yourself sounds great, right? No more lines! No more shady contracts! Well, buying housing is great, if you can afford it. And all that rental revenue that used to go to the state and help fund maintenance? Well, that’s going directly to the banks. Housing was no longer a human right but an investment piece. 

After rentals were privatized, housing costs skyrocketed. Because those who couldn’t afford to buy were left to chase what was left of the rental market. And after privatization there wasn’t a whole lot left, making the lines even looooonger.

Ulrika, who teaches gender studies at Uppsala University, helped us understand the impact of privatization on housing access in the city.

ULRICKA 17:38

So long story short, part of what happened in the 90s is that a lot of the hyresrätter, so the rental public housing got sold, turned into bostadsföreningar, so housing associations, which meant that the number of rentable flats was drastically reduced, and you had to be in housing queue forever, which, of course, made it impossible for people who weren't born into knowing that to ever get a rental first hand contract, which then in turn made it so I think people who- you had to either come from wealth, which means you know the Northern part, or you had to come from outside of Stockholm so people with, who had wealth that could be translated into down payments for apartments.

NASIM 18:24

I was in the queue for 18 years to get an apartment in Årsta.

BJORN 18:30

14 years when I got a first apartment.

Jess 18:35

Sweden’s path from housing as a public good to housing as a private investment has been a rough transition. Today’s housing market is still a hodgepodge of public, private, and black markets.

The precarity that many Stockholmers find themselves in often has to do with a complete lack of access. The housing success stories I heard from Stockholmers were usually the result of a big break, knowing the right person who knows a person who knows a person. Whether looking to buy or desperate to rent, every story of luck in the housing market hinged on the divine intervention of friends of friends, elderly residents, generous strangers, and providential housing swaps. 

Our script consultant Fatou, a librarian who also works in restaurants, told us that she usually wears a pin that says “looking for an apartment.” I mean, it couldn’t hurt, and you never know what could happen.

IMAN 19:33

I was really lucky when I was younger. The area where I was from- Solna, they were like oh everyone that's living with parents and is like about 18 years old are gonna get an apartment. So I got an apartment when I was like 21 turning 22, and then I switched my apartment from Solna to here in Södermalm. With an old lady, she put like a note on the building where I was living and then it took like three months and then we switched the apartments.

LOUISE 20:12

Well, it was through my personal contacts, and uh it happened to be that, a person I didn't know so well but was in my network, my friend network not my network, she had to move to Gotland and I had to move to Stockholm in the same time, so we just swapped apartments and continued to pay our own fees during this time.

JACQUELINE 20:40

So I ended up at a party- a midsommar party in Uppsala, and there I met this American guy who kindly enough found housing for me in Stockholm. I told him that I was gonna start a study program or a residency program at the Royal institute of art Kungliga Konsthögskolan for a year maybe two. And he announced to me that it is very difficult to find housing in Stockholm, and so he through his own network of connections within the world of architecture since he did his studies here, he was able to find housing for me in Södermalm.

Jess 21:30

I have to say it was a huge relief and a bigger privilege to not worry about housing while I was living in Stockholm.

But housing insecurity breeds more than the constant stress of finding a place to call home. It also means that residents have less and less of a say where they live and have to jump at the first viable option even if it only holds them over for a few months.

Beyond financial constraints and cultural knowledge, there are many obstacles to accessing housing in the city. Add age, family size, citizenship, language, and you see residents options get smaller and smaller, until only a few neighborhoods are left on the table.

Also, to you city planning heads out there wondering why we haven’t talked about the Millions Program. Trust us it’s coming. We can’t get out of Stockholm without getting into it.

So stick with us for the next episode where we’ll be exploring how the city is organized, and the different types of access that residents may or may not have. Stay tuned, the next episode is Segregation, Part I.

Jess 22:49

We are produced with the generous support of the Graham Foundation and Konstnärsnämnden (The Swedish Arts Council). Thank you to our senior producer Adélie Pojzman-Pontay and our team of graduate assistants from the architecture department at the Rhode Island School of Design: Bilal Ismail Ahmed, Daniel Choconta Guerrero, Kim Ayala, and Uthman Olowo. Fatou Camara consults for the show. Cory Jacobs does our music. And Adriene Lilly is our sound designer.

If you’re not a Patreon subscriber yet, you are really missing out on some very cool stickers and a mini-series to a mini-series of all the digressions and cool stories that we had to cut out of the show. These episodes focus usually on one speaker. And you ought to check them out, they’re very cool.

If you still can’t get enough of us, find us on social media, which you can find in the show notes along with our website and our newsletter, where we have all full of fun content like readings, maps, and videos.

If you have a comment or a question record it and send it to us at htdbpodcast@gmail.com. You might end up on the show.  Lastly but certainly not least, rate and review us 5 shining stars on Apple Podcasts, it helps other people find the show!

Okay, until next time, this has been Here There Be Dragons!

[OUTRO]

NASIM 24:30

I got my apartment illegally but I don't know if I can say it. I still can go to prison, I think.  [Laughs]