On Wednesday, June 5, the "Nightmare Rent" campaign day took place in Speyer's city center. This was organized under the direction of Prof. Dr. Blettner and Prof. Dr. Ebli as part of the Corporate Social Responsibility lectures by students on the International Marketing Management Master's degree course in cooperation with Diakonisches Werk Pfalz. The background for the project was this year's nationwide Debt Counseling Action Week of the Working Group of Debt Counseling Associations (AG SBV), which focuses on the basic right to affordable housing.
The day started at 11 a.m. with an information stand in Maximilianstraße, which was visited by numerous passers-by and interested parties. There was lively discussion and an exchange of opinions on the topics of housing, renting and over-indebtedness. The interactive stand was divided into different areas so that visitors could visually compare different rent prices per square meter, actively think about their own expenses ("What do you spend the majority of your income on?") or simply look at information material on debt advice from Diakonisches Werk.
Confirmation of the relevance of the topic is provided by the clear "expenditure winner": housing costs, ahead of expenditure on food, leisure & culture or transport. In addition, passers-by had the opportunity to write down questions to be discussed in the subsequent panel discussion in the Postgalerie Speyer.
Right at the start of the event, the eye-catching guerrilla marketing campaign with spray chalk in the city center attracted attention; spray-painted footprints led straight to the campaign stand, and the panel discussion in the evening at the Postgalerie was pointed out. This took place at 5:30 pm and was intended to round off the day of action. Top-class experts were invited to take part in the one-hour discussion: Mathias Münster as a representative of Caritas Speyer, Bernhard Guttenbacher, debtor and insolvency advisor at Diakonie Speyer and Michael Schurich, board member of Gemeinnützige Baugenossenschaft Speyer eG. The evening was moderated by Prof. Dr. Blettner and Prof. Dr. Ebli, who debated questions on the topics of rent, the risk of over-indebtedness and possible solutions with an interested audience. At the end, the experts were able to discuss the questions previously collected from visitors to the stand and the audience on site. This brought an exhausting day to a successful conclusion. The spectators were also enthusiastic and were "glad that such an event had taken place", but also demanded that an exchange on the topic should take place regularly.
Further information, impressions of the day of action and the video of the panel discussion can be found at https://www.albtraum-miete.de/.
