In today's Sweden there is no place for bad luck
Sweden is the country that is overflowing with property billionaires, has a record low national debt and slums where cockroaches thrive.
The cause can be traced to a failed housing policy but also a new social contract with a special clause aimed at everyone who suffers setbacks:
Blame. Your. Yourself.
Aftonbladet's Alexander Bönke and Magnus Wennman describe Bromma House in several articles – a housing for the socially vulnerable where municipalities have spent millions of kronor.
Housing is too kind a word, by the way – the report is more like a descent into a hell that most people probably didn’t think existed in Sweden – or would rather turn a blind eye to.
Everyone knows that the Swedish housing market is not exactly the political equivalent of Alexander Isak.
“Catastrophe”, as a researcher summed up the situation a couple of years ago.
When the housing issue is debated, it is usually about sky-high prices, a dysfunctional rental market and high thresholds for young people. All very busy – but a middle-class problem.
Less often, there is talk about the situation at the bottom of the housing ladder or, as the report calls it: the bottom of the bottom.
That something has gone terribly wrong is not just a feeling. In a report on the housing markets in the Nordic countries that came out a couple of years ago, Danske Bank stated that Sweden stands out as the worst with greater homelessness and overcrowding than in our neighboring countries.
One reason for the problems is that Sweden has less support for vulnerable groups – the money spent on housing policy in Sweden is spent primarily on supporting those who own a home with a tax and interest deduction.
Another report from the construction company Veidekke, which compared Sweden with twelve other countries, points to Sweden as the worst in class.
What makes Sweden unique, according to the review, is its low social ambitions. Everything should be solved by the market.
Then it is perhaps not so strange that it looks the way it does.
Because if in the big cities it is desperately difficult and expensive to get a home for everyone who is struggling according to the standard middle-class manual, it is almost impossible for those who have been sidelined due to illness, divorce or unemployment. The people who are referred to Bromma hus are not valued particularly highly by this market.
Two things that appear in the report are symptomatic. One is that one of those who ended up at Bromma hus, Mikael, is one of the Swedes who got stuck in the debt quagmire after the housing crash of the 90s when he sold a villa at a loss. The Swedish bailiff still takes a large part of his pension every month.
In Sweden, both a statute of limitations and a fixed-term sentence apply to murder. There is no further limit for unpaid bank loans.
This is one of the reasons why Swedish banks are making enormous excess profits, according to a recent analysis by the Riksbank.
A clear winner in Sweden's housing policy is therefore the banks.
Another is everyone who owns properties.
One such person is Niam AB, which owns where Bromma hus is located.
Niam’s owner, Urban Edenström, is just one in a long line of people who have become billionaires in the decades-long housing and property boom in Sweden.
One of the largest Swedish fortunes built up since the 1990s, by Roger Akelius of over 100 billion kronor, comes from residential properties but rarely or never appears on any lists because ownership has been transferred to foundations in the Bahamas.
These riches have not arisen in a vacuum.
A number of factors have contributed: A number of factors have contributed: the removal of property tax, reduced corporate taxes, the abolition of taxes on wealth, inheritance and gifts, low interest rates and generous deductions. Last but not least: the state has taken its hand off the responsibility of providing the population with housing and instead outsourced this task to real estate companies and banks
What has happened is in practice a transfer of capital from people who live in rental apartments and live on wage labor to property owners.
The Swedish state is also wealthy, with a national debt that is among the lowest in relation to GDP in the entire Western world. It is something that the country's finance minister, regardless of which government happens to be in power, rarely misses an opportunity to brag about.
But the money is not enough for a social housing policy that brings Sweden up to par with other poorer countries. And the standard of Bromma House is in line with the law, as a representative of Värmdö Municipality explains to Aftonbladet.
"It should be of a 'reasonable nature'. It becomes a question of interpretation and there can be different opinions," she says.
Well, you probably can.
The housing situation in Sweden is part of a development that is beginning to resemble a new social contract. According to the old school textbook, “doing everything right” like getting an education, getting a good job, and paying taxes is no guarantee of something as basic as being able to buy a home.
Anyone who wants to become a citizen or even stay in the country must “behave” and not show “lack of character” (prime ministers who cannot distinguish between private and public assets are not included, however).
People who make a bad decision or just happen to come across fate? For them, it is hardly worth trying.
This Sweden is reminiscent of the classic joke about the boss who always put half of all job applications aside without reading them with the explanation: I don’t like unlucky people.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar