key: cord-0815043-nq09i7o5
authors: Alyanak, Oğuz
title: Crisis in Göttingen’s Corona High‐Rises: Rethinking Urban Justice amid the Pandemic
date: 2020-08-12
journal: City Soc (Wash)
DOI: 10.1111/ciso.12336
sha: 11e6bf7fc36498c62850d7e35b87e820722acb3c
doc_id: 815043
cord_uid: nq09i7o5

nan

third of its population is made up of students, graduate workers, and administrative staff. Hence, it was quite a surprise when Göttingen made it to international news in mid-June, and not just once, but on two accounts. Both were related to the pandemic, and have to do with virus outbreaks in the city's two prominent high rises.

The first case took place in late May in a housing complex known as Iduna-Zentrum. An 18story apartment which hosts approximately 700 residents living across 407 flats, Iduna was originally built in 1975 as a "Prestige-bau," that is, a luxury complex with balconies, a swimming pool and two bridges connecting it to the university's main campus and the city center. It was even featured in postcards, which displayed it as if to attest to the city's luxurious housing opportunities. Iduna was initially owned by the Iduna Gruppe, a private insurance company, who, over time, sold the flats to private owners. Today, the high-rise has over 200 landlords who rent the rooms to the city, which, in return, rents them out to the recipients of Hartz IV, the lowest level of unemployed benefit offered by the German state. Initially built to accommodate the young scholars attending the University of Göttingen, the high-rise became a residence known for its low-income residents. In a lengthy piece published in the German weekly, Stern, it is referred as "das Hotel zur lockeren Schraube," the hotel for people who have loose screws (Stern 2019).

I first heard of Iduna in Hemingway, a kneipe (bar) in Iduna's vicinity, which was also a few hundred meters from my flat. My drinking buddy, an ex-punk German man in his early 50s, has told me of its horrendous living conditions-broken or unlocked doors, dirty mattresses, accumulating garbage, and prevalence of meth and flakka users-and advised me against renting a flat there. I later learned that some students did actually live there. And their narratives seemed to corroborate the stories I listened to in the kneipe. Elisabeth, a graduate student, moved into Iduna in early March primarily due to its low rent (500 Euros per month). Her flat was clean, but the outer hallways were dirty. She was not bothered by groups of people-mostly foreign children-gathering in the apartment front to play games. But when she found out that one of the A few months after she moved in, the first case of COVID-19 was spotted in the high-rise. In the last week of May, one of its residents, a middle-aged resident of Albanian origin, gathered with 30 friends in a shisha bar for the Ramadan festivities (Tagesspiel 2020). When he returned to his flat, he infected 60 others. The housing complex was put under lockdown a few days later, making a name as a "Corona-Hochhaus," a Corona high-rise (Stern 2020). A day before the police secured the perimeter, Elisabeth had evacuated her flat per her department's orders, and was forced to take a COVID-19 test (for which she tested negative). Groner Landstraße demonstration. 23 June 2020. Photo Credit: Michael Trammer As each demonstrator found a spot on the asphalt and by the sidewalk, talking to each other or watching the curious faces who were staring at us from the windows of Groner Landstraße 9a-c, one of the organizers shouted into the microphone: "Hello Groner Landstraße 9a-c. Hello demonstrators!"

After a few brief remarks explaining the purpose of the demonstration, and clarifying that the organizers had intended to gather in front of the Sparkasse bank by the high-rise-the city forbid them from doing so-they shared a cautionary remark. "There may be civil police among us. In case you need legal help, please call the following number: 05517708000." Given that Antifa organizations would be in attendance, and eight police officers were injured in the clash two days prior, friends had warned me that things could get violent. The demonstration, however, proved to be anything but violent. In fact, with the exception of two slogans-"Alle zusammen gegen den Faschismus" (All together against fascism), which was chanted as a representative from the Free Workers Union of Göttingen took the microphone, and "Fa, anti, antikapitaliste, fa, anti, antikapitaliste," following the speech by an Antifa representative-the crowd was calm.

The demonstration continued with a representative from the city's Roma center, who briefed us on the Center's position on the lockdown. Given that a large number of residents of the high-rise were of Roma background, the representative was a key player. His speech focused on the struggles of the Roma people in obtaining accommodation with better living conditions and highlighting the precarity of foreigners in Germany as evident in "Corona Landstraße." His depiction of the high-rise as a Corona hotspot was apt given the conditions in the high-rise-a point that became clear as we listened to pre-recorded interviews with residents. "Crowded, pest infested small flats with tiny corridors," reiterated one of the organizers after the recorded interview ended. She demanded the city to move its residents to a hotel free of charge. "No social distancing is possible inside this house," she argued, as the apartments were at a maximum 37 square meters, and the smaller flats a mere 19 square meters. "600 people, among them 200 children, had no food when they were first put on lockdown" she asserted, and added: "The food packages provided included no special diet for children. They live in precarity."

But precarity, as the next speaker made clear, was not the result of the pandemic. It was a structural condition that has long been there and perpetuated strategically both by the media and the state. The speaker reminded us of the xenophobic predisposition of the mediatic focus on shisha bars, which are attended mostly by people of migrant backgrounds, such as the Albanian man from Iduna. These accounts perpetuated racist attitudes already prevalent in Germany.

According to a policy paper published by the University of Bamberg, which was mentioned in her speech, immigrants faced segregation in the German housing market, both by being assigned by the state to low-income housing units, and for those who have the means, by not being permitted by the landlords to move into better residences due to their foreigner status (c.f. Rodhe 2009). Housing complexes such as Iduna or Groner Landstraße 9 were therefore not exceptions, but a long-standing reality whose stark presence became further visible during the pandemic.

The calls to stay home and self-isolate, which, we are told, are necessary measures to slow down the spread of the virus, bring to fore problems with precarious living conditions of immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers who are usually placed in crumbling housing units. That it is foreigners who have to face the burden, moreover, bring to our attention the underlying racist and xenophobic attitudes, which, to this day, are part and parcel of the German society. On the one hand, there is the long-standing Orientalist fear that the unruly foreigners would not selfisolate, and should therefore be forced to do. And on the other, there is the reality that most of the hotspots, such as the high-rises, or workplaces such as slaughterhouses, are inhabited by foreign/migrant workers, who are living or working in decrepit conditions not out of will, but simply due to lack of better alternatives.

COVID-19 is a not just crisis in public health. As the Groner Landstraße demonstration makes clear, it also makes visible problems pertaining to urban life, which have as much to do with urban justice as with racialized accounts dominating public conversations.

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Positioning of Migrants into the Housing Market: Structural Conditions and Urban Policies

Begegnung mit den Mietern eines Göttinger Hochhauses

Germany: Quarantined housing block residents attack police

Erneuter Corona-Ausbruch in Göttinger Hochhaus: 700 Leute unter Quarantäne

Was der Corona-Ausbruch in der Stadt über soziale Spaltung verrät

* The author would like to thank Matthew Abel for his careful reading of earlier drafts of this article, and Michael Trammer for providing the visuals from the Groner Landstraße demonstration

Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: 10.1111/ciso.12336

Then came another announcement, this time reminding us that the police would intervene unless we kept our distance from each other as part of the city's Corona mandate. This announcement was followed by boos and chants. A couple of more speeches later, the demonstration came to an end.Groner Landstraße demonstration. 23 June 2020. Photo Credit: Michael Trammer

Lockdown. Quarantine. Stay-at-home. We have familiarized ourselves with these terms in recent months as more than half of the world's population has been requested or forced to stay put amid the pandemic. For those who have the means, staying at or working from home may be a welcomed change of scenery. Yet for others, such as the residents of Iduna or the Groner Landstraße, being stuck in a 30 meter square flat with a family is not a cherished option.