Housing for Copenhagen

I've been to a bunch of town-hall debates the past couple weeks, and most of the questions I get asked, by both Danes and internationals, are about housing.

• How do we keep big investors from pricing out locals?
• How do we make sure that essential workers in Copenhagen don't have to drive in from far away suburbs?
• How do we accommodate the expected new Copenhageners while preserving what keeps the city unique?
• More than once, it's been asked with a specific comparison: How do we steer Copenhagen clear of Barcelona's fate? (I hadn't even known it was that bad in Barcelona.)

For some, the answer is: rent controls and social housing. But with long waiting lists and low availability, I worry this creates a different kind of privileged class in Copenhagen, only switching out financial capital with social capital as the well-connected and system-savvy snatch up the good deals.

For others, the answer is: build, build, build, with the mother of all Copenhagen building projects, the artificial peninsula Lynetteholm, serving as a litmus test. Listen to the excellent heated discussion with our mayoral candidate @Karoline for details on how wrong this is. The good thing is that if stopped now, it's not hard move the rocks you see in the picture around to make a sensible and responsible storm protection system.

In Alternativet, we're not dogmatic about whether solutions come from the market or the municipality. But we are against an awkwardly forced expansion of the out into the harbor. We much prefer a city that grows organically into the underdeveloped neighborhoods along the S-train lines spreading north, west, and south of Copenhagen. We also want a light rail to Brønshøj and Husum and new S-train stations including an express line under Rigshospitalet. We want 6-story housing with courtyards near the stations to create the population density needed for cultural life and creative urban centers that compete with and complement the city center. This is a long-term development strategy which the professional planners of the civil service in City Hall still believe strongly in. Politicians should listen to them.

More radically, in Alternativet we want to house more people in our existing square meters, because the most sustainable building is always the one that is already standing! We want to make it easier and more economical to downsize. We want to reform the address registration system, which makes it harder to rent a room and puts many - usually young foreigners and people undergoing tough life transitions, some of the most vulnerable Copenhageners - on the wrong side of the law. This needs to be fixed. We also want to make it easier to live together in collectives and other social arrangements. A collective has the potential to be a form of household even more stable than a family, since when one person doesn't fit in any more, a new person can take their place. Unfortunately, the law and our banks haven't caught on - as it is now, financing to start a collective is non-existent, and rental law is such that when the original members move out, a collective in a rented space dies because the contract can't be passed on and the landlord would rather use a fresh start to set the rent up.

It is an obscene disrespect for our planet in a time of climate crisis that a distorted housing market can make it more expensive to live on less resources for many. And it is a disrespect for Copenhagen's people to tell them that the only solution for affordable housing is an artificial peninsula in the harbor that will actually make the city worse in almost every single way. The good news is that better options are available! And I hope to pursue them from City Hall.