Charleroi Hardly more than an hour from Brussels is another side of Belgium in Charleroi. This was the coal-mining, industrial center of Belgium. Over the last fifty or more years, the mines shut down. Perhaps one steel mill is left in operation, but the long, hulking buildings and giant smokestacks can be seen on all sides of the train, as we came into town. At over 200,000, the city isn’t that small, and is still one of the largest in Belgium, but the huge scale of the industrial footprint seems ever present, even as the city has tried to duplicate their size with public works and urban renewal projects.
We were there to meet with colleagues who are in the process of building a tenants’ union in the city: CarolLocataires Ensemble. We met the organizer at the train station in Brussels, so we got something of a briefing on the way. The organization is young and feisty with a couple of wins under its belt, but still trying to firm up its campaign and organizing plan to meet the challenges.
Leaving the train station, we crossed the river into the old quarters to get a sense of the life of the town. There had obviously been work along the river to encourage its use, but many streets we walked along from there seemed empty with commercial spaces vacant and too many building with more “for rent” signs than occupied apartments.
We made it to the huge square around city hall and a mammoth church, but few businesses were open, and there were less than a handful of people in the square. Walking back down towards the river again, whole blocks seemed deserted. The backstory there was a dispute between the city and a Moroccan developer, who simply picked up stakes leaving the city with the hindmost. We stopped to meet at a restaurant supported by several of the unions, who had giant health and social security buildings on the street, but elsewhere the businesses were a collection of tattoo parlors, dollar stores, vape centers, and the like, interspersed with other developments. It wasn’t as if the city, supported by the region and the European Union, had not taken a shot at restoration, but it was clear that it hadn’t worked.
Meanwhile, for tenants, rents were high, mold was an issue, and protections and support were slim. We saw a couple of buildings where tenants had tangled with an absentee landlord, but were still being stymied by his refusal to deal with the mold. Bizarrely, he had pressured the city inspector to amend his report to blame tenants for creating the condensation, despite the fact that the mold was even visible outside the building.
Many of these buildings had reverted to the city, and we talked to members who were either involved in squatting or wanted to squat. We talked a lot about the old ACORN squatters’ campaign in the US in the 80s. They found the “Squatters: The Philadelphia Story” on YouTube, so we offered to do a Q&A after a showing of the movie in Charleroi in the future.
One of the leaders asked me a unique question: what are the stories of what ACORN did that you can’t tell anyone? I answered simply: that’s the whole point; I can’t tell anyone.
