Berlin housing activists lead campaign to fight rising rents
Associated PressBERLIN — Affordable housing advocates in Berlin launched a grassroots campaign Saturday to force the city’s government into taking over nearly 250,000 apartments worth billions from corporate owners to curb rising rents in one of Germany’s hottest real estate markets. “There need to be some rules here for the game — it’s a city, not just open land for people to do what they want,” said Thomas McGath, a representative of the group behind the campaign, known as Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. “It’s not something that can be completely determined by the market.” The city had been a low-rent mecca after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 opened the gates to the economically depressed former communist east of the city. “We’ve had three landlords in the past seven years and the year before last we were informed our rents are going up by between 415 and 750 euros a month,” said Paul Afred Kleinert, an author and translator who has lived in Berlin’s gritty but now fashionable Kreuzberg district for 33 years. “There’s a massive sell-off happening in this city,” he said, adding that foreign real estate investors in particular seem to have few qualms about raising rents.
History of this topic
Berliners in favor of measure to expropriate 240,000 flats
Associated Press
Berlin buys thousands of apartments from corporate landlords
Associated Press
Priced out by corporate landlords, Berlin renters fight back
Al Jazeera
Berlin’s radical plan to stop rocketing rents
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