NO RIGHT TO PROFIT, BUT A BASIC RIGHT TO HOUSING
by Sabine Nuss, Blatter Nov 2019 https://www.blaetter.de/archiv/jahrgaenge/2019/november/kein-recht-auf-rendite-aberein-grundrecht-auf-wohnen?print Those who followed the rent policy debate in Berlin in the summer of 2019 witnessed an ideological mud battle: The Berlin Senator for Urban Development, Katrin Lompscher, had presented a draft for a "law on rent limitation in the housing sector in Berlin" as a reaction to the increased rents in the city. Among other things, it envisaged freezing rents for five years, introducing an upper rent limit and possibly even reducing rents. Real estate completed since 2014 has been explicitly excluded, and further special regulations should avoid "unreasonable hardships" for landlords. But even before any law was passed, many a representative of the real estate industry knew that the "left-wing building brigade"[1] would lead the capital directly back to the GDR. This shrill polemic drowned out the debate that should be conducted: a fundamental debate on the ownership of housing. The reasons cited for rising rents are mostly population growth in the cities and too little new construction. This diagnosis is not wrong. In recent years, however, urban sociologists have analyzed up and down that the reasons lie deeper: at the end of the 1980s, for example, non-profit status for the housing sector was abolished. In other words, the profit restrictions that had previously been in force were lifted for around 1800 housing companies with almost four million dwellings. In addition, since the 1990s the federal government, the federal states, and local authorities have privatized more than two million dwellings. Social housing construction was gradually dismantled: "Between 1992 and 2012 alone, the number of rent and occupancy commitments in social housing fell from 3.6 million to less than 1.5 million."[2] After the subsidy programs expired, the former social housing was left to the free market. This has led to the abandonment of political options. The market should regulate it from now on. However, this market, which according to pure teaching always creates supply where there is demand, prefers condominiums to rental apartments. In 2015, less than 50,000 of the total of 217,000 completed apartments were built as rented apartments:[3] "Precisely because the business of rent increases is so attractive, too few new buildings are being built," says urban sociologist Andrej Holm. Investors only build when they expect a profit. This is why the rents in the new buildings are anything but cheap: in the inner cities of the growing cities, new apartments are offered at significantly higher prices than apartments in older buildings. And that's not all: rents in new buildings are also rising much more sharply than in old buildings. New construction cannot, therefore, offer the urgently needed housing for low-income households - at least not under private sector conditions. For Berlin alone, around 350,000 households at risk of poverty are lacking around 120,000 flats.[4] The