“Today’s eviction of the International Center at Lahnstraße 1 makes it clear how urgently Frankfurt needs common good-oriented spaces, but things should not continue as they have been. Squatting can be a legitimate means of drawing attention to vacancies and the city’s failures in this area. After all, municipal vacancy is simply embarrassing, not least with a view to the expectations placed on private actors in the real estate market.
What we view critically, however, is when an occupation is intended to permanently force a specific use by a specific group. For a democratic urban society, transparent and fair procedures are needed. This is precisely why we are committed to ensuring that the numerous properties that the city has acquired in recent years through its right of first refusal are consistently put to a common good-oriented use, but not through occupation, but through concept-based allocations. An occupation can never be a permanent solution. Our goal must be for the city to have no or only minimal vacancy and to make the available spaces available to the common good quickly and transparently. If this neglected process can finally be organized more efficiently in the future via ABG, we expressly support this path,” says Martin Huber, parliamentary group leader of Volt in the Römer.
