On January 26th, 2015, Heiko was evicted from his home at 10 Otterhaken in the Wilhelmsburg district of Hamburg. For a long-time he was an obstacle against the ‘Bauverein Reiherstieg’ housing cooperative because of his organising against rising rents and due to more involvement from tenants. Since Heiko paid his rent late several times, he had to be thrown out this time.
Nearly 200 people in solidarity tried to prevent this happening. The eviction was delayed by a good 90 minutes. Unfortunately, the cops then succeeded to get through a door at the rear of the building with the help of the BFEs [special units of the German police]. The stairwell was blocked by supporters, but was then violently evicted. All this in the name of the ‘Bauverein Reiherstieg’.
On January 26th, their office was closed for security reasons. Days before and after the eviction, security guards took turns in front of the building. For a few days, it was probably calculated that protecting the property was no longer necessary, but that didn’t work out. On the night of Tuesday 3rd to Wednesday 4th of February 2015, we beautified the facade of ‘Bauverein Reiherstieg eG’ (at 127a Georg-Wilhelm-Straße in Wilhelmsburg) with six paint bombs.
We wish to show our solidarity with this action to Heiko and all the others who are, have been, or will be targeted by evictions!
Each eviction must be prevented at all levels, by all means!
We hope that the ‘Bauverein Reiherstieg’ will not continue with evictions, otherwise we will be back!
Anti-evictions Group