Huge Berlin Victory for Public Housing

There have been some stunning elections in Germany very recently. But the most important item is not the results of the parliamentary elections, although I do want to give a nod to the German  Socialist Party the SPD which came in first in these German elections because it’s important for people around the world to understand that the leading party in Germany is now its socialist party, but the most important result was for a referendum in Berlin and I want to talk to you about it, because it affects us. All activists in Berlin have for years been struggling to cope with the loss of affordable housing for the millions who live in Berlin, the capital of Germany and they’ve had several problems. The general rise in real estate prices the movement of huge hedge funds and equity capital organizations to buy up housing, particularly the housing that had been built in East Berlin as part of East Germany’s housing program. When unification happened, big capitalists came in and bought up all those apartments and now rent them out. 84 of the housing in Berlin is rental housing. That’s how German people live, and with the rising prices, came the gouging landlords raising the prices, even more, to make big profits off of scarce housing in Germany’s capital city. And so, people went to work to stop it and that work culminated on the 26th of September 2021 in a referendum coinciding in Berlin with the national election.

To get on the referendum ballot the activists had to collect, which they did, 304 000 signatures demanding the referendum and here’s what the referendum said for large landlords, that is landlords owning thousands of apartments, they will be expropriated. Their property will be taken from them in order to create approximately a quarter of a million affordable apartment housing units. Chapter 15 of the German Constitution contains the wording of the sort that in English language-speaking countries is called Eminent Domain. It gives in Germany the right to the government, national, regional, local, to take property when it’s in the community interest.

Eminent Domain exists in the United States as well. It’s a broad power that if and when a community says it needs for the community as a whole a piece of property owned by an individual, they can force the individual to sell the property at a price determined by three or four independent appraisers and working out an average of them, they can force the sale so that the community has the land, has the property for the community’s use as a whole. That’s the law in Germany, and this referendum was to give the Berlin government the right to force the sale of apartments owned by large landlords. There aren’t that many of them and a few are monsters in that business, so it’s mostly directed at them and it will help hundreds of thousands of Berlin

residents live less expensively. The results of the referendum were 56 in favour, 39 against, and this were despite enormous efforts by the housing industry by the landlords and by the politicians they control to oppose the referendum. The people of Berlin ignored that perspective and voted for it. This is a real blow to those who want to make out of housing what they’ve already made out of food and water and what they’ve made out of other necessities of life: a profit-making opportunity charging more than they otherwise would to make more profit. The mass of us paying more which hurts us so that a small minority can get more profits.

That’s not democracy, it’s the opposite. It’s sacrificing the majority for the profit of a minority that you could move against this, that could really defeat gentrification, which is what this is called in the United States that determined activity by people could result in this is an important lesson for the housing advocates in every corner of the world including the United States. The results of the referendum are not binding, now there begins the pressure between the leaders of this movement, who know they have the vast majority on their side, and the hesitant politicians who are usually in the pocket of the big landlords. We will watch, and we will see how this struggle moves forward, but it is an enormous victory and step forward for those who want to make housing a basic human right and not a profit opportunity for a small minority of the population.