Cities for Rent: Investigating Corporate Landlords Across Europe

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Everyone needs a home, and even more during a pandemic.

High demand for rental flats across European cities has contributed to make housing a very attractive investment. At at time when many people can’t find an affordable and decent flat to live, reports of a huge increase in investment flows into housing across Europe go hand in hand with stories of abusive practices by ‘corporate landlords’, companies that buy and rent out housing for profit.

Where is all that money coming from? Who are the companies and investors buying so much housing across Europe? How does this phenomenon affect people’s lives and homes in European cities?

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Join the new European network for journalistic non-profits

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A new generation of news organisations is rising all across Europe – one that is strongly committed to serve its audience through public interest journalism and is eagerly trying to build up new, sustainable business models for our profession. In a joint effort Netzwerk Recherche and Arena for Journalism in Europe together with partners from academia (HBI, ZeMKI) and philanthropy (Schöpflin Stiftung) will – for the first time – bring together this emerging scene of journalistic entrepreneurs that we call The New Sector.

We identified close to a hundred news outlets all over Europe that are part of this journalistic evolution. We will soon create an online map and a searchable database of Europe’s vivid scene of journopreneurs in which we want to display the agility, versatility and creativity found among its members.

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The Climate Networks reaches out at BETD

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On Thursday, March 18 (10.30-11.30 CET), Arena for Journalism in Europe will be at Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue (BETD) Media Fellows – Connecting Journalists Conference to present the Arena Climate Network. Our network coordinator, Jelena Prtorić, will discuss the benefits and importance of networking, will introduce different elements and features of the Arena Climate Network … Read more

User’s map for the Climate Network

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We keep adding new features to our Arena Climate Network forum. We’ve recently added a “Users map” feature, which allows you to filter users by their location. We hope it will be useful for people looking for sources and colleagues in other countries. If you are a journalist or a researcher covering/working on climate, join … Read more

New resources on the way in The Arena Climate Network

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Following Dataharvest Digital 2020, during which we dedicated two weeks to topics related to climate and energy, we launched the Arena Climate Network  – a community of investigative journalists and researchers covering climate change. The Arena Climate Network aims to facilitate information flows between journalists (interested in) covering climate at the local, national and EU level, … Read more

The Arena Housing Project is flying

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The Arena Housing Project has recently experienced some of its busiest weeks as it has launched more tools and resources for journalists and researchers working on housing across Europe. We have welcomed Jelena Prtorić as a Community Coordinator at Arena, and it’s in a big part thanks to hear that you can now follow the … Read more

The coronavirus fuels journalistic collaborations

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The coronavirus has given new aspects to the Arena Housing Project and the collaboration in the network – and at the same time, new problems arise in the housing field because of the virus.

The Arena Housing Project is a result of the Dataharvest 2019 conference, where many sessions focused on the housing crisis in Europe.

One of Arena’s main goals is to inspire, create and coordinate networks to promote and facilitate cross-border collaborative journalism. The present crisis has made even clearer how important collaborative journalism is when we want to research and report on complex issues that don’t care about borders. The Housing Network now has 176 persons affiliated – mainly journalists, but also housing experts from academia, activists and others.

We build resources together – shared databases and interactive map

Everybody was told to stay home to prevent the spread of the virus. But what about those who don’t have a home? The homeless population is vulnerable even at the best of times, and they are especially at risk during the Covid-19 pandemic because they have little access to hygiene, and many have bad health.

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COVID-19 pushes flats from Airbnb to the long-term rental market

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This week, the Arena Housing Project published its first piece of curation journalism. The text gives an overview of how Airbnb investors are moving their flats to the long-term rental market – and lets you take the next step in the research and reporting.

As the global pandemic of COVID-19 has brought tourism and travelling to a halt, nice-looking flats that previously were only offered at daily rates on platforms like Airbnb have been appearing as long-term rentals in cities across Europe.

Housing watchers, however, assume those flats will go back to the tourism market as soon as people can travel again.

For critics of tourist rental platforms, this is further proof that the likes of Airbnb are turning housing into an investment object: when homes become a financial asset to exploit for profit rather than a public good

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Dataharvest and the coronavirus

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The flagship activity of Arena for Journalism in Europe is arranging Dataharvest – the European Investigative Journalism Conference.

Today, it is two months and two days until the conference is set to open. Right now, more and more countries in Europe are introducing measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

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