Response to interpellation 2022/23:281 on the liability of tenants for crimes committed by other persons
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns responsibility for tenants' criminality. M believes that property owners need better opportunities to evict tenants who cause disturbances or commit crimes in order to increase safety 1. M argues that the proposal expands an existing supervisory responsibility to protect decent people in vulnerable areas 2 and that it harmonizes with the Convention on the Rights of the Child by balancing the child's best interests against society's need for protection 3. M emphasizes that parents who cooperate with authorities are protected 3. V argues that the proposal leads to innocent adults and children being more easily evicted and becoming homeless 4. V believes that the proposal does not create safety but risks increasing crime 4 5. V criticizes the proposal because it affects parents who are already socioeconomically disadvantaged 5 and argues that it makes more families with children homeless, which gives criminal gangs opportunities to recruit more children 6.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Malcolm Momodou Jallow has asked me if I intend to submit proposals that involve a possibility of evicting innocent adults, children, and abused women in order to tackle crime in society, and if it shall also be possible to seize villas owned, for example, by parents of a child who has used drugs in the home or somewhere else in the villa area.
Let me begin by stating that today we have a situation where more than a quarter of the population feels unsafe in their own residential areas. According to the Crime Prevention Council's safety survey, half of those living in socially vulnerable areas experience insecurity. This development must be broken. In the work of creating safer residential areas, property owners have an important role. In order to increase safety for other residents, they need to be given better opportunities to evict tenants who commit crimes.
There is an ongoing investigation regarding safer residential areas, and it aims at the regulatory framework for rental housing. If a tenant, or someone for whom the tenant is responsible, causes disturbances for other residents that cannot be accepted, it constitutes a serious breach of the tenant's obligations according to the rental agreement. In such situations, the landlord must have the possibility to terminate the rental agreement. Such a possibility already exists today.
I think it is important to emphasize that an eviction is not a punishment from the side of society. The possibilities to terminate a lease agreement must instead be designed based on a reasonable balancing between different opposing interests, more concretely the interests of the landlord and the tenant, as well as the interest of other residents in the property and in the residential area.
As I said: Already today, the tenant has a supervisory responsibility that covers both family members and other persons living in the apartment. What we are now talking about is, therefore, an extension of a responsibility that already exists.
According to the original directives for the investigation, the aim was that the tenant should not be given an equally extensive supervisory responsibility for their children as for others who are residents. But through the additional directives that the government has recently decided on, this limitation is removed. The reason is that parents and family have a decisive importance in preventing crime among children and young people. It is reasonable to require that a parent who knows that their own teenage child carries weapons or sells narcotics in the surrounding area takes measures to prevent it.
At the same time, the importance of designing the rules on the tenant's supervision responsibility in a proportionate manner is emphasized in our supplementary directives, i.e., that it becomes a balance between goals and means in practice. This means, in particular, that the investigation shall take into account the European Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which in turn means that consideration shall be taken of the interest that the tenant and the tenant's children have in being able to retain their housing. In this way, we ensure that the proposals that the investigation will submit also become balanced.
Society has a responsibility to ensure that all children have somewhere to live. I can mention that the county administrative boards have a mandate to support the municipalities in their work to counter homelessness, among other things by preventing evictions. Furthermore, the Swedish Enforcement Authority has a mandate to work towards establishing a cooperation to prevent evictions with social services and landlords in all municipalities. That work shall be specifically directed towards preventing evictions that affect children.
The investigation's mandate also includes assessing whether it should become easier to evict a tenant who has committed a crime against a close relative in the shared residence. It is obviously important that there are sufficient opportunities for the person who has been subjected to violence to remain in the residence for their own sake. The parallel investigation on strengthened tenancy protection for women subjected to violence is reviewing that issue. That mandate is to be reported in June.
It is the whole that one must see here. Both the investigation into safer residential areas and the investigation into strengthened rental housing protection for women exposed to violence are important, and I look forward to the investigators' proposals.
Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)
Madam Speaker! Today's debate between me and the Minister for Justice concerns the ongoing investigation into being able to more easily evict family members when a child, a person, or tenants have committed a crime. Vänsterpartiet has no views whatsoever on evicting people who commit crimes, nor does it concern the prosecution of criminals.
But these proposals are primarily about whether if a person living in someone else's rental apartment, for example a child or a subtenant, commits a crime in or near the residence, the entire household should be able to be evicted - that is, also adults and children who are innocent. That is what we must emphasize. The Government also wants it to be easier to be able to evict these tenants without them first being given a chance for rectification.
Just as has been stated, it is already fully possible today to evict people who commit crimes and/or use the residence for criminal activities. Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmers measure will therefore only lead to that groups who are innocent today will be more easily able to be evicted, nothing else. The guilty can already be evicted. The question is about why one should evict innocent people who have not committed any crime.
The Minister of Justice also mentions that this is not a punishment. One can get hung up on technicalities and semantics, but if the Minister steers in a law that makes it easier to convict innocent parents and siblings, it becomes, in some sense, the society's punishment. That cannot be denied.
The Minister's and the government's starting point is that they want to create safer residential areas. But is that really achieved by evicting innocent parents and innocent children and making innocent families with children homeless? How do more homeless families with children contribute to a safer Sweden? I cannot say. Is it really a mathematics that adds up?
Where does the minister intend for the evicted families to go? I have asked that question many times, but no one can answer it. I would like to hear what the minister says about that. What does the minister and the government intend to do to ensure that the people who are evicted have somewhere to go?
One could think, and wish, that this proposal is just a bad joke. It is somehow difficult to accept that anyone can seriously believe that this is a serious attempt to contribute to a safer society.
How many children is the government prepared to sacrifice in order to appear decisive itself? Which children is the minister prepared to sacrifice? It is at least not the children from their own neighborhoods, as it appears. This only applies to children who live in rental apartments, not children who live in villas.
Is it the Minister's position that children who live in villas do not commit crimes? They do, if the Minister has missed that. Can we evict parents of children who live in rental apartments and siblings of children who live in rental apartments because they commit crimes? But we are also certain that children in villas and condominiums also commit crimes. Why does this legislation not also apply to those people who are well-off and live in villas? Why do we have legislation that applies to a certain group and not another? The problems exist in the whole of society.
There is an inherent injustice in the proposal that will affect many people. Therefore, I want to know how this specific government intends to act. What does the government intend to do so that not all these people will become homeless?
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! I thank Malcolm Momodou Jallow once again for the opportunity to discuss these important issues in the chamber.
Let me give a brief background on why the investigation was commissioned. It was decided by the Vänsterpartiet government, the Social Democratic government that had Vänsterpartiet's parliamentary support – additionally backed by Miljöpartiet. To the extent that there is criticism regarding the appointment of the investigation in the first instance, it should be directed at your own Justice Minister, not against this one.
Why is it so easy for me to nevertheless embrace the value of the investigation being commissioned? Well, that was what I described, namely that there was an enormous insecurity in large parts of society, not least in the country's vulnerable areas. Over half of the citizens living there experience an immediate insecurity. No one can sit idly by without taking all the measures required to reverse the development. It is also a reality that a few individuals hold these areas hostage in their criminal activities and with their large capital of violence. That is the background to why this is happening.
I also turn very firmly against the question of whether it concerns the guilty or the innocent. Fundamentally, there is already today a responsibility for tenants for what occurs in connection with their own residence. That responsibility applies to both a 17-year-old lodger and a 17-year-old child. On the other hand, the responsibility is limited to the area immediately adjacent to the residence. This means, for example, that the Court of Appeal for Western Sweden, in Gothenburg, a few weeks ago decided on an eviction in a case where violence or crime had occurred in connection with the residence that caused fear in the surroundings. My direct question in return is: Should that responsibility be removed?
The proposal is about keeping the responsibility that already exists in the legislation but raising the question of whether the crime should occur in the residence, in a corridor near the residence, in the entrance, or if the responsibility should extend to, for example, include the nearby barbecue area to the residence or the nearby playground. The one who does not want to expand the responsibility is the one who bears the entire burden of proof, unless it is not the case that the responsibility that already exists today, in the interpellant's perspective, should also be abolished.
The reason there is a difference between a rental apartment and a villa is that there are two completely different legislations. This is not a criminal law legislation, but it is a rental law legislation. All of us who at some stage in life rent a home have different obligations towards a landlord. We can, if we do not fulfill our commitments according to the agreement, lose our homes. There is already today a possibility to evict a tenant who has not done everything that falls upon the tenant to ensure that an occupant or a child does not commit a crime in the vicinity of the home. Now we want to expand the scope.
I want to emphasize the imbalance that existed in the previous directive. Why should an expanded obligation be greater when it concerns an inherent 17-year-old than one's own child who is 17 years old? It is an imbalance in the directives that we took over and that we have straightened out.
Fundamentally, it is about ensuring that responsible people, parents who do everything they can to counteract their children's criminality, are never evicted. But parents who either turn a blind eye or themselves participate, who do not comply with the social services' instructions or otherwise, must understand that their own housing situation is also at stake.
Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)
Madam Speaker! Let me begin by stating that the Left Party has never sat in the government. We were not in the previous government; it is important to say it correctly. It was the Social Democrats who sat in the government with the Green Party, and it was their original proposal, which we are still opposed to today. I had an interpellation not so long ago where I asked the same question to the Social Democrats, who de facto are opposed to the additional directive. They will vote against it.
The number of homeless people is increasing in Sweden. Evictions of families with children are increasing. According to the Swedish Enforcement Authority's latest statistics, the number of children who have been forced from their homes over the last five years has increased by almost 50 percent. In an extensive review, with Malmö as an example, the newspaper Hem & Hyra shows that the tightening of the law according to the proposal in the government's directive could lead to over 50 households being thrown out during a year, and it could affect about thirty children - in Malmö alone during one year.
That the government fully consciously wants to contribute to even more children being evicted is, to say the least, outrageous. This is a development that definitely risks leading more children and young people straight into crime and thereby increasing, not decreasing, crime.
When all the children become homeless and the Minister for Justice cannot account for where the evicted people are to go, what is it that says that gang members or gang groups cannot use this situation to more easily recruit them? When society says that they are not wanted, they have no home, poor socio-economic conditions, then it is even easier for gang criminals to recruit them. They ensure that they have somewhere to live, give them food and money. How does that create safety? What the Minister for Justice wants to do creates even more insecurity.
I still have not received an answer as to where all the evicted people are supposed to go. It is a reasonable question to ask, when the Minister for Justice presents proposals that will make a number of families with children homeless. In that case, it is important to account for where they are to go.
How does the Minister think this aligns with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which, among other things, implies that the best interests of the child shall always come first in measures concerning children? The Convention on the Rights of the Child also states that every child has the right to a reasonable standard of living. A reasonable standard of living definitely includes housing.
People also talk about parental responsibility. Why does the Minister for Justice not believe that these parents are doing everything they can to prevent the problem? What is the real reason why he actually seems to assume that the majority of the parents of these specific children do not care about their children? Who does the Minister for Justice think he is when he claims that the investigation and the supplementary directive are an important step in clarifying parental responsibility? The absolute majority wants nothing else than to create safety for their children and their family - their own and others' children. To believe that just tenants who are parents need to be enlightened by the Minister for Justice and learn from him that they need to take responsibility for their children is outrageous.
Many of the parents whom the Minister for Justice accuses are already struggling - socioeconomically. They struggle every day. That the Minister for Justice adds this on top of everything else they are going through is deeply concerning. Many of the parents struggle every day so that their children will leave criminal environments. They call social services and the police to get help.
When the Minister for Justice presents a proposal stating that you will become homeless if your children commit crimes - which of these will contact social services or the police? None of them. How does that align with the Minister for Justice's goal of creating a safer society? It does not.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! I perceive that the tone is being escalated and that the argumentation is being broadened. This is possibly as compensation for a lack of depth and insight into what the proposal fundamentally entails.
There is no doubt whatsoever that I am prepared every day of the week to emphasize parental responsibility. At the same time as I do so, there is also no doubt that the vast majority of people, the vast majority of parents, take their responsibility and do their absolute best – also in situations when one's child is on a downward spiral. There are many parents who are overwhelmed by their children and are not themselves able to handle the situation. Those parents are therefore not the subject of either today's legislation or the legislation that we now wish to propose.
Even according to today's rules – I want to emphasize that – it is thus the case that parents who have not taken their responsibility, who have not cooperated with social services and who have not heeded the surrounding society's signals in certain situations can lose their rental contract. But in that case, the criminal activity and the disturbances against other residents must have occurred in close connection to the residence.
Is that responsibility also to be abolished? Is that the Left Party's view? That would also be a striking announcement.
What we are saying now is that today's rules, which already apply to the walkway and outside the entrance to a multi-family house, should also apply to the nearby barbecue area and possibly to the playground 150 meters away. It is a reasonable way to adapt today's responsibilities to the reality that causes large parts of our population—in the areas that the interpellor claims to protect—to feel insecure every day when they leave their homes to go to work, take their children to school, or whatever it may be.
To be against it, I think, is irresponsible. I think it is turning all the responsible people and all the parents who want to take responsibility against the wall, and that is something I will never agree to.
When it comes to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is no doubt whatsoever that today's legislation, and also the legislation we now see ahead of us, harmonizes very well with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is undoubtedly about ensuring the best interests of the child, but there is always room for balance - not least towards the interests of the surrounding society and the strong need for protection against serious organized crime.
However, the way to take care of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in this expansion of the existing responsibility is, naturally, to ensure that the parents affected by this are those who interact with their youth in crime, who do not take responsibility and who do not obey the signals from social services.
Those who contact the social services, those who interact with the social services or the school or the police to do everything in their power as a parent to halt their children's criminality, they are protected by our legislation. Those who do not do that, those who in practice interact with their children and youth in a criminality that creates insecurity for everyone else in the same stairwell or in the same area – it is against them that this expanded responsibility is directed.
As said: In Gothenburg, parents were evicted in April from a rental apartment because they had not cooperated with social services and other authorities and municipal actors to counteract the children's criminality.
Should that possibility, which already exists today, be removed? It is the logical consequence of the interpellant's reasoning, and it would undoubtedly be a rather sensational announcement.
Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)
Madam Speaker! Firstly, as has already been said today, it is fully possible to evict tenants who commit crimes and/or use the housing for criminal activities, and we have no views whatsoever on that. I want to make that clear.
Secondly, the police have been clear that in their preventive work they cannot see any benefit whatsoever from it becoming easier to evict tenants. The police say that. This affects their preventive work. They think it is a bad proposal.
The social services say the same thing. They think it is a bad proposal. There are 33,000 homeless people today and 50 percent more homeless children whose families have been evicted.
The systems we have with the social services and the county administrative boards do not work, because children are still homeless. I believe that introducing further legislation that will make even more families with children homeless, still without being able to account for where they are to go, is irresponsible.
I ask once more: Where are all these people who are being evicted supposed to go? I think that is a very reasonable question to answer.
We are going to put criminals in prison, not evict their mothers and innocent families with children. Evicting innocent people does not make Sweden safer. More homeless families with children do not reduce crime in Sweden, on the contrary. It is simple mathematics that one might think even the right and Gunnar Strömmer could understand, but no.
I urge the government to immediately withdraw this proposal. It is unfair and unjust and should therefore be discarded, as it will not lead to a safer Sweden. On the contrary, it will give criminal gangs excellent opportunities to recruit more children. It will create a Sweden that is less safe than it is today.
Therefore, I hope that the Minister for Justice will come to his senses and withdraw this proposal, just as the social services and the police want.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! First, we must clarify what applies today. Yes, one can evict a tenant who commits a crime. But a tenant, therefore, has a duty of supervision.
Here I have a judgment from the Court of Appeal from as recently as just a couple of weeks ago. It is written about it in Hem & Hyra. It is about children living in the tenant's apartment.
As parents, one already has a duty of supervision for children today. What the legislation we see before us now is about is that this duty of supervision shall remain. We were not told – is today's responsibility for children or residents also to be removed?
We want the responsibility to not only apply to the balcony or on the same floor or outside the entrance to the house but also to apply to the nearby barbecue area and in the playground and on the schoolyard nearby.
This is an extension of an existing, functioning responsibility which shall therefore apply in cases where parents are not diligent, do not do their best, and do not interact with the surrounding society to curb their children's criminality, but on the contrary either turn a blind eye or themselves contribute to it. Already today, there is the possibility to terminate their lease agreements. Now that possibility is to be extended, and there are good reasons for it.
Let us go back to the fundamental purpose! We do this for all the hardworking people - not least in the areas that we describe as vulnerable - who every day get up to do their part as citizens in this country, who go to work, take their children to school, do their homework, learn the language and struggle on. We must see the extraordinarily extensive insecurity that affects all these people. This is not a signal that is aimed at those who do their best at all. It is aimed at those who do not do their best, who do not take their responsibility, who turn a blind eye and who do not respond when the surrounding society speaks out.
Ultimately, the public sector will always have a responsibility to ensure that children have a roof over their heads. That will be resolved even in these cases. But the fundamental parental responsibility, we will never bypass or compromise on.
ANDRE VICE TALMANNEN
I want to remind that the chamber's deliberations must not be disturbed by observers in the gallery. I may have the guards remove those persons who disturb the order as soon as possible.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.