HaMo stays !
Socialise housing. Preserve free spaces. Solidarity together.
The Handstand & Moral is threatened and we need your help
For ten years, HaMo has been a meeting place in the neighborhood and an easily accessible venue for politics, art and culture. Now the residents have bought the house from the landlord and have become part of the Solidarische Wohnungsgenossenschaft (SoWo). On the one hand, this is good and important because it gives the project a secure long-term perspective. On the other hand, it is also a great challenge, because with the refinancing of the house purchase and the necessary renovations, our running costs are rising massively. So that HaMo can continue to exist as an open space, we need your support.
We ask you all to transfer a small monthly sponsorship for the maintenance of Handstand & Moral and are happy to welcome new people in the plenum!
Your donation is tax deductible. Here you can find the information how you can support the project. Our bank details are:
Handstand & Moral e.v.
IBAN: DE30 8306 5408 0004 0168 58
SB Altenburg
For English version click here.
What is HaMo about?
The Handstand & Morality exists since spring 2012 and is an open space for culture and politics. There is a group of people who meet weekly on a volunteer basis to address requests, plan their own events, and facilitate the use of the store for others. An important principle of the project is that the store should be as easy to use and visit as possible. On the one hand, this means that we operate on a donation basis and do not make a profit. On the other hand, we strive to make both our weekly plenary and the visit accessible to as many as possible. This means, for example, that in principle any person or group can use the store for their own meetings or public events.
In the last decade, there have been concerts, readings and exhibitions of very different genres and topics. In addition, the store has also been used many times for public events of political education and mobilization, for example on socio-ecological transformation, anti-Semitism critique, anti-fascism, anti-racism and feminism. Last but not least, HaMo is a popular retreat and working space for socially engaged groups in this thematic spectrum.
The current situation
Since the founding of HaMo, we rented the space from a landlord by commercial contract. As in many similar projects, our store was only feasible through a comparatively low rent - and a solidary cross-financing on the part of the house residents. This material basis made it possible for us to work in a relatively relaxed, donation-based and non-profit-oriented way, to set up a colorful program and to make the rooms available to the general public. At the same time, the rental relationship was always precarious on the basis of the easily terminable commercial lease, and rent increases did not pass us by either.
This situation has now changed radically since the residents bought the building (and thus also the store) from the private owner in April and have become part of the Solidary Housing Cooperative. This is a great success, since the house is now socialized and permanently withdrawn from the real estate market [link or more information about the model see below]. Thus, it can finally serve the purposes for which houses are good: to live in them, to come together instead of making profits. And this is also good for HaMo, since we can now count on a long-term secure existence of the project outside the profit logic of the market, together with the house residents and the SoWo. Unfortunately, this very welcome socialization also has its price, in the truest sense of the word: Due to the enormous increase in real estate prices in recent years, the purchase price was very high (although still below current market prices). The loans required for this now have to be paid off. In practice, this means that our ongoing monthly costs multiply. And there we have a problem as a self-organized, non-commercial project.
How you can support
Our goal is first of all that HaMo can continue to exist under these conditions. At the same time, we want to maintain the low-threshold usability and accessibility, especially financially. We want to allow commercialization in the sense of fixed and higher prices in exceptional cases at most.
In order to ensure that HaMo, with its non-profit and donation-based character, can exist in the long term and sustainably, we would like to spread the basic financing over many shoulders and build up a circle of supporters.
That means we ask all of you - visitors, users, friends and sympathizers of the project - to send us a small monthly contribution of about 5-20€. To give you an idea: If 40 people donate 20€ per month, our running costs would be covered for the next two years. Of course we are also happy about larger standing orders or single donations. However, for the sake of predictability and sustainability of our finances, we prefer permanent donations, depending on your possibilities.
The account runs on our non-profit association, so the donations are tax deductible if necessary. The money will be used exclusively to cover our running costs and any necessary renovation work.
We believe that with the Handstand & Moral we make an important contribution to the fact that one can feel well in this city beyond consumption pressure, cost pressure and city marketing Bla-Bla. We believe Leipzig still needs low-threshold spaces for cultural and political education and organization. And we simply don't want HaMo to be the next on a long list of open spaces to disappear because of real estate speculation. With your help, we have a chance to keep HaMo!
Socialize housing, preserve open spaces, stand in solidarity with each other! HaMo stays!
Your Handstand & Moral Plenum
Ps: Apart from the necessary money, the operation of the store needs working hours. That's why we are always happy to receive donations and people who want to join us or just want to organize an event. Interested? Then come by: (Almost) every Thursday at 7pm in the store at Merseburger Str. 88b or write an email to kontakt@handstandundmoral.de.