Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing

ttheanonymousone about 2 hours ago 60 commentsRead Article on reuters.com

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soonnow•about 1 hour ago

To add a b it of context. They do not want to confiscate housing. They do want to pay landlords, though below current (very high) rates. Also this would only apply to private real-estate companies not individual owners.

And they can't govern alone, so I think it's unlikely that this plan is actually implemented as originally planned. The likely coalition would contain 3 parties.

dirasieb•about 1 hour ago

>it's not confiscation, you're just forced to sell at a price i decide is fair

sound logic

mschuster91•about 1 hour ago

Most of the affected housing used to be government owned, sold at firesale prices after the CDU Diepgen government thoroughly wrecked the state finances with a banking scandal at the end of the 90s.

The large investor landlords purchased the homes and often didn't even do the bare minimum in upkeep. The real estate nevertheless appreciated massively because of Berlin getting more and more popular.

It therefore makes sense to nationalize this housing stock, and I'd see a value comprised of "original purchase price, upkeep and inflation-plus-3%-tied appreciation" as fair value. Maybe even less because they extracted 20 years worth of rent payments from the properties already.

4gotunameagain•about 1 hour ago

The "free market" (which has been demonstrated to not be free at all) has no place in basic needs such as housing.

Rent extraction is utterly counterproductive for a society.

Housing should not be a commodity.

WithinReason•about 1 hour ago

Who builds the houses then?

paganel•about 1 hour ago

You need sound logic against the evils of neo-liberalism, there's nothing logic about housing being as expensive as it now is.

giacomoforte•about 1 hour ago

It's a reflection of the demand from people who want to live in Berlin.

throwawaydeutsc•about 1 hour ago

I used to live in South America (mid-tier city), living here in Berlin my will never understand how such intelligent people in general (no irony or sarcasm) never thought in a collective sense that if you have a market with a rigid supply in terms of availability (not occupied homes with no incentives for renting), it never made a serious planning for building.

I was travelling to some big cities (between 70% of size of Berlin to 4x its size) and you can find a plethora of options since something modest that can fit in a minimal income (salario minimo) to nice appartments.

Here we had in the last 7 years 55K units made, but in my home city alone we had more than 470K in a single city; if you're willing to be 1 hour away by car you can find apartments that the normal berliner never would have access in his/her entire life.

Not to dunk on berliners, but once you're in the environment where people do real housing at scale you will see a small magic in terms of prices for the legacy supply dropping.

tirant•33 minutes ago

Unfortunately solving the housing crisis will remove any incentive to vote for the Left or the Socialist Party.

Remember the first incentive of any politician is to remain in power not to solve citizens problems. Sometimes there’s overlapping, fortunately.

karmakurtisaani•15 minutes ago

I don't believe this is basically ever the case. The reality is more like that simple promises often collide with messy reality, and the compromise solution ends up solving a fraction of the original promise.

atoav•43 minutes ago

Has to do mostly with the historic environment of the country. Berlin was a split city, so after the 90s it abstained mostly from what it perceived as dangerous political experiments. Also die Linke was basically seen as a continuation party of the GDRs SED, and as such didn't have the greatest of reputations in that city (shooting/jailing people that want to move out will do that miraculously).

Die Linke today is a completely different generation of people and drawing any direct line to the SED is mostly wishful thinking by polemic conservatives.

rkachowski•about 1 hour ago

Before knee jerk reacting to this

1. 60% of the Berlin population voted for nationalising (expropriating) apartments from major landlords in a referendum - this is a bipartisan issue

2. This only affects entities with 3000 or more apartments

fabian2k•42 minutes ago

If they try to avoid paying the full price, this will simply be stopped by the courts. If they do this the proper, legal way it will be far too expensive and not do anything useful.

Affordable housing is a very important topic, but this isn't doing anything to fix the current issue.

hackandthink•about 1 hour ago

Decades ago, when I was still living in Berlin, the predecessor party of Die Linke (the PDS) was made up of creepy former GDR officials.

Yesterday on TV, I saw mostly hip young people. Elif Erap, the party’s lead candidate, reminded me of Chrissy Hynde from The Pretenders.

snickerer•40 minutes ago

This headline is alarmist ('far-left' sounds dangerous for some people). And 'nationalise housing' is just wrong.

This party is not far-left, it is just left. But that is not the point. My point is that a headline about anti-left alarmism hit the HN front page. This is unusual; the HN crowd keep their discussions out of daily politics most of the time. So, this has the smell of importance. Alarm! Far-left!

And this is weird because Germany is in real danger of electing a fascist government at the moment. There is not the tiniest chance of socialist projects coming to power, but the far-right is winning—except for Berlin.

And then an OMG-far-left headline pops up here. This headline was made to push anti-left fear, not to inform the readers.

trashymctrash•35 minutes ago

> This party is not far-left, it is just left.

Of all parties in Germany that have a shot at governing, it is the furthest left. Thus, „far-left“ is not wrong in my opinion.

tirant•30 minutes ago

The party is far left. There’s nothing to the left of them. They are the direct successor of the SED, the same ones that supported firing anyone willing to leave their socialist Berlin utopia by crossing the Berlin Wall.

Nowadays votes by many young people that never lived in Berlin pre-1991.

mordae•35 minutes ago

That's liberal left, not far left. Routers is just doing its usual capitalist propaganda here.

Far left would be inciting people to outright hang landlords. Much like far right is labeling anarchists as terrorists in the US.

expedition32•about 2 hours ago

After WW2 all European countries had massive housing shortages. It was not capitalism that solved it but heavy government involvement. In a span a few decades millions of people were re-housed. The free market is remarkably terrible at pumping out houses fast.

dash2•about 1 hour ago

Hmm, I got curious and read Wikipedia:

> Levittowns are six large suburban housing developments, three of which are actually named "Levittown." They were created in the United States (including one in Puerto Rico) by William J. Levitt and his company Levitt & Sons. Built after World War II for returning white veterans and their new families, the communities offered attractive alternatives to cramped central city locations and apartments. The Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) guaranteed builders that qualified veterans could buy housing for a fraction of rental costs. Under Levitt & Sons, Levittown housing would maintain racial covenants that excluded non-White would-be buyers.

Italics added. Seems the government was somewhat involved in the US too. Of course, now the reason "the free market is terrible at pumping out houses" is government regulation too....

andsoitis•about 1 hour ago

Then the govt. should build new homes; I'm not sure that taking homes from people ("nationalize") creates supply.

usernametaken29•about 1 hour ago

But it does. There’s immense amount of houses that are unused because they’re part of speculation, and it’s easier to leave them empty than to deal with tenants and their rights. This is an extremely well documented, systemic issue in large European metropolis and especially in Berlin. Forcing existing property to be used immediately adds supply, and it also lowers prices. Exactly the things large property developers do not want. But I don’t give a shit what they want. I want affordable rent.

Mashimo•about 1 hour ago

And the party agrees with you: https://dielinke.berlin/vergesellschaftung/

> »Durch Enteignung entsteht keine einzige neue Wohnung.«

> Das stimmt, aber darum geht es auch nicht.

The nationalization is not about supply, but to stop the price hikes. They also want to invest in new affordable homes at the same time.

Or so they claim.

rkachowski•about 1 hour ago

It's not from people, it's from corporations that rent out 3000 or more apartments.

mschuster91•about 1 hour ago

We did but stopped in the 90s after the infamous Neue Heimat scandal that got brought upon us by the Conservatives.

ChickeNES•about 1 hour ago

Yet in the US, it was developers following the Levittown model that resulted in tons and tons of single family homes, so I fail to see how the free market is terrible at "pumping out houses fast"?

mschild•about 1 hour ago

The market is not terrible pumping out houses fast, but the current market conditions mean that said houses/apartments are not affordable for most people.

The average rent in Berlin (and other German cities) is not very high but that's because a lot of flats still run on a very old contract. If you're moving to Berlin, finding an apartment is incredibly difficult, even if you're willing to spend a lot of money. My grandmother lives by herself in a 90sqm flat in a really nice area and pays 400 Euros a month. In the last 10 years she tried to find a smaller flat (30-40 sqm) for herself but the cheapest she could find was 750. So she stays where she is and just doesn't use 2 of the rooms she has except for storage. In the meantime, a friend of mine moved to Berlin and couldn't find a decent 60sqm flat for less than 1400 Euros. The only way to get those affordable rents is either knowing someone who is moving out or getting super lucky by finding and getting it through a public ad.

Massenbesichtigung (mass viewings) are not uncommon. The agent will publish a public timeslot and literally hundreds of people lined around the block will show up to view a single flat.

gambiting•about 1 hour ago

Well, think whether the market conditions that lead to it could be recreated today, and then you'll see how the free market fails to deliver a lot of housing fast. Developers have long ago realized it's better for them to pump out fewer houses with more profit margin slower, than lots of houses with little profit margins. They get a planning permission on a giant site for a 1000 houses but only build 50 a year to not disrupt the high prices they can charge for each unit. That's free market for you right now.

tmnvix•about 1 hour ago

Same story in NZ.

bluegatty•about 1 hour ago

Germany doe not have a housing shortage problem, it's another set of problems.

They will have to wail until after WW3 because Russia is openly threatening action, European governments are trying to prepare their citizens, German populists want to return to 'normal relations' with Russia, which means 'use our money to invade and kill everyone to the East of us, just not us'.

Germany and Europe is in for a very rough ride.

Were it not for the war situation, then we could say this is 'healthy political turmoil' - but this is at a time when outside parties will take advantage of European disunity.

cedilla•about 1 hour ago

Berlin has a massive shortage. Vacancy rates are at about 1.5%. Functioning housing markets are at about 3%.

ant6n•about 1 hour ago

This sounds super alarmist. Bit it’s not: the party only got 25%, so they will have to make a coalition with other parties to govern.

They were junior party in many previous coalitions.

The weird thing this election was: there were like 7 parties with a mayor candidate - and none of them grew up in Berlin.

Leonard_of_Q•about 1 hour ago

Well, it is essentially the same-but-modernized party as that which held eastern Germany under the boot of communism for for some 45+ years. They took the route taken by so many communist parties after the dissolution of the Soviet Union by changing their name, here from SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) via PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) to Die Linke (The Left) so that certainly is something to keep in mind. This is the party which built a wall to keep people from leaving their supposed workers and farmers paradise, shooting those who tried to cross over. It may be filled with young women with odd hair colors instead of stodgy old men but the ideology hasn't changed a whit and is ready to add a few more millions to its death toll.

It is patently absurd that communism is still considered as a legitimate ideology while it should be placed right next to Nazism in the "never again" category. It is responsible for more death and suffering than the latter but those edgy students - who don't seem to learn much at all there in academia - don't seem to know or care.

mschuster91•about 1 hour ago

Oh good lord, the utter majority of the Left weren't even alive in the GDR period. And on top of that, all the other parties have gobbled up their East German Blockparteien as well and we don't label them collaborators either, nor do we call the CDU and especially CSU a Nazi party despite many former NSDAP members ending up there post WW2.

throwawaydeutsc•31 minutes ago

For general context (this topic will be very charged, but anyways) in several times the party that won yesterday voted against urban density for new units.

This is a compilation of an anthologic Reddit post (deleted, but all the links are working):

...

Und wenn dann jemand Nachverdichtung vorschlägt, passiert das hier:

1. Gegen 240 landeseigene Wohnungen in Lichtenberg [1]

2. Gegen 150 landeseigene Wohnungen in Lichtenberg (Salzmannstraße) [2]

3. Gegen 105 landeseigene Wohnungen in Lichtenberg (Joachimsthaler Str.) [3] [4]

   Hier hat sich die Linke sogar dazu verleiten gefühlt, den Gegnern einen Preis und 500 € zu geben, damit sie ihren Kampf gegen den sozialen Wohnungsbau fortführen können. Die Linke betont ganz stolz, dass das Geld bereits verwendet wurde „um neue Protest-Banner anzuschaffen und mehr Menschen auf das Thema aufmerksam zu machen“ [5].

   Again: „das Thema“ ist die Verhinderung des kommunalen Wohnungsbaus.

4. Gegen 84 landeseigene Wohnungen in Lichtenberg (Gotlindestraße) [6], dabei wird das erzkonservative Weltbild der Bürgerinitiative unterstützt: „So, wie das Viertel einmal geplant wurde, soll es bestehen bleiben.“ Siehe die Selbstbeschreibung der BI [7].

5. Gegen 50 landeseigene Wohnungen in Lichtenberg (Atzpodinenstraße) [6]

6. Gegen 150 landeseigene Wohnungen in Schöneberg [8]: Dort haben sie Einwendungen gegen den Bebauungsplan formuliert, also aktiv rechtliche Schritte gegen den Wohnungsbau eingeleitet, und ganz offen ihre Position kundgegeben:

   „Das Vorhaben [150 landeseigene Wohnungen!] ist für die Anwohner*innen ausschließlich mit Nachteilen behaftet, einen gesellschaftlichen Mehrwert gibt es nicht.“

7. Gegen 95 landeseigene Wohnungen in Treptow [9]

8. Gegen ~60 landeseigene Wohnungen in Treptow [10]:

   „Die Nachverdichtungen bestehender Wohnquartiere sollen möglichst vermieden werden und gegebenenfalls behutsam unter Erhalt von möglichst viel Grün und unter Berücksichtigung der ursprünglichen Siedlungskonzepte erfolgen.“

9. Gegen 30 landeseigene Wohnungen in Friedrichshain [11]

10. Allgemein gegen Wohnungsbau in Treptow [12]

11. Allgemein gegen Wohnungsbau in Pankow [13]

12. Allgemein gegen Neubauziele in ganz Berlin [14]

Alles Beispiele von Die Linke, weil das die Partei ist, die eigentlich am härtesten für den sozialen Wohnungsbau kämpfen müsste.

Auch Neubau im Außenbereich wird nicht gerne gesehen: 5.000 Wohnungen auf der Elisabeth-Aue sollten verhindert werden [15].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20211015205615/https://www.tages...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20210202231844/https://www.links...

[3] https://www.facebook.com/linke.lichtenberg/photos/a.16689808...

[4] https://www.archivebuttons.com/articles?article=https://www....

[5] https://archive.is/a8QVo

[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20220926185744/https://www.berli...