Narratives of a Fractured Trust in the Swedish Model: Tenants’ Emotions of Renovation

Abstract

Research shows there is a current wave of housing renovation in Swedish cities, where private as well as public rental housing companies use "renoviction, " or displacement through renovation, as a profit-driven strategy. This article focuses on emotions and renoviction, in particular the emotions of tenants currently facing forced renovations, in Sweden. We discuss how power is reproduced and questioned, and illustrate methods used by housing companies to carry out extensive renovation. The following questions have guided our analysis: What kinds of emotions are evoked among tenants experiencing an extensive, top-down and costly renovation? What particular injustices and violations are identified by the tenants in this situation? How can these violations be understood in relation to the current housing policy? Our research is qualitative and builds on semi-structured interviews with tenants as well as extensive ethnographic work in a neighborhood undergoing renovation, followed by steeply increased rents. We use the metaphor of "fractured trust" to conceptualize the emotional reaction of tenants, and argue that citizens´ trust in the Swedish welfare system is being broken locally, in the wake of ongoing top-down renovation processes, by use of a rationality that does not take into consideration tenants' perspectives and needs. We conclude that anxiety, angst, anger, and loss, attached together in a common feeling of shock, were the most prevalent emotions expressed and were described by tenants as a response to unfair treatment. In the interviews, a complex set of violations performed by the housing company in a renoviction neighborhood is brought to the forefront here, and set in this context of systemic violence exerted against tenants in contemporary Sweden.

Renovations as an investment strategy: circumscribing the right to housing in Sweden

“…The paper connects to previous studies on renovations in Sweden within the housing and urban studies literature. Whereas scholars have illustrated how renovations produce displacement pressure (Baeten et al, 2016;Polanska & Richard, 2019;Pull & Richard, 2019), I suggest that there is a need for dialogue with the scholarship concerned with the financialization of rental housing to understand why these renovations take place, how they are conducted on the ground, and what their political effects are on Sweden's housing system. Accordingly, by building on these two bodies of literature, the paper contributes knowledge regarding renovations of private rental housing as an investment strategy and the relation of this strategy to current political-economic conditions and particularly Sweden's tenure legislation.…”

Domicide: displacement and dispossessions in Uppsala, Sweden

“…Renovations in Kvargärdet and Gränby have resulted in 25-60% rent increases and extensive tenant relocation well documented by media (Berglund Adervall, 2012; Irefalk, 2014) and researchers (Baeten et al, 2017;Mauritz, 2016;Polanska & Richard, 2018, 2019Söderqvist, 2012;Westin, 2011) alike. Gränby and Kvarngärdet were built during the construction boom years in the sixties.…”

“…It is important to note that the tenants in the area are far from passive victims in this process. On the contrary, the process has spawned fierce and multi-varied contestation, spanning from microscale resistance on an individual scale, to the formation of the grass-root organization, political art projects and new political subjectivities on a collective scale (Polanska & Richard, 2018, 2019. This needs to be illuminated further, to do justice to the cultural richness of neighborhoods, and to ensure that the process of displacement, as regarded from the perspective of tenants, does not pass uncontested.…”

“…(Maria, 2015) The frustration experienced by Gertrud stems from the failure in making her voice heard and be taken seriously. It is a reaction on the insidious tactics the landlord deploys in order to cohere, intimidate and even threaten the tenants to silence and compliance (see Baeten et al, 2017 for a deeper elaboration around those tactics; Polanska & Richard, 2019) but also the inability of public institutions like the Rent Tribunal and the Town hall to protect their rights in a process they consider to be if not illegal, at least immoral. While some tenants have been rather passive throughout the process, some because they could not fathom that things would turn out the way it did -'how can this be happening in Sweden!?'…”

The new housing precariat: experiences of precarious housing in Malmö, Sweden

“…Research on housing precariousness in relation to housing inequalities in Sweden has so far been limited (Listerborn, 2018;Grander, 2018), whereas homelessness and its relation to institutional frameworks is an established field of research (Knutagård, 2018;Sahlin, 2015;Samzelius, 2020). Current housing research in Sweden has also been paying attention to increased threats of displacement due to renovation plans, so-called 'renoviction' (Baeten et al, 2017;Polanska & Richard, 2019;Pull & Richard, 2021); increased segregation (Andersson & Turner, 2014, Scarpa, 2015; and lack of affordable housing (Grander, 2018). Altogether, this research illustrates the shortcomings of the contemporary Swedish housing market.…”