PAH Global action: blackstone
PAH Activists in Barcelona invite all to join in an international action day against Blackstone Group LP, the world's largest private-equity firm. We want to visualize that this is a global fight against Blackstone a vulture fund speculating with our right to housing and the city. We are not going to allow Blackstone to continue evicting our families. STOP EVICTIONS! STOP BLACKSTONE! SI SE PUEDE!"
On February 11th parallel actions against Blackstone Group will take place in Barcelona, NY City and San Francisco. It would be fantastic if anyone else is interested in joining or organising their own demonstration against Blackstone Group. They have offices in Paris, Dusseldorf, London, Dublin and Madrid and other office spaces, like the one in Barcelona, which are not listed on their website.
Please let the PAH know if you need any help or specific info about the situation in Barcelona, and also if you decide to join it would be great to get some of your pictures wherever you are and information about your own struggles for our press release. You can contact PAH Barcelona if we can be of any assistance.
Here's Facebook link to the events organised in the USA: https://www.facebook.com/events/996448097050746/?notif_t=plan_user_invited
Why does Blackstone totally suck?
Blackstone is the largest owner of rental housing in the United States. They have grown basically profiting on the economic crisis, on the suffering of people.
Blackstone sends about 100 million dollars a week on foreclosed properties in USA. They buy properties that have lost value, and wait for the value to increase. They also buy rental properties, and are very evil landlords, who raise rents as much as they can and evict tenants without hesitation.
Last year, Blackstone decided to expand their business by venturing in to Spain. After Spain’s housing bubble popped in 2008 about 50.000 families are losing their housing every year, due to unpayable morgages. Rental has become now the big market. Blackstone has been buying many houses of people that are struggling to pay rent. They and other "vulture funds" are even buying rent-controlled housing. Madrid's local right wing government sold 5,000 rent-controlled apartments to Goldman and Blackstone. The government told tenants their rental conditions would remain the same. But now (surprise!) many tenants have received demands for higher rent, many have been threatened with eviction, and some have already been evictied.
This is how Blackstone evicted a 53 year old cancer patient from his rent-controlled apartment
Blackstone has recently bought all the housing from Catalunya Bank, an institution that received 12 billion euros ($15.4 billion) of taxpayer's money as a bail out. PAH activists consider this to be nationalizing the bank."These homes belong to the people," not Blackstone, says Maka Suárez, a member of PAH. But foreclosures and evictions by Blackstone have rapidly escalated in Catalonia. 5093 public affordable housing homes have been sold to private companies.