(Berlin) Grassroots push law to ease Berlin housing crisis

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http://www.dw.com/en/grassroots-push-law-to-ease-berlin-housing-crisis/a-18520497

A grassroots initiative is putting pressure on the city of Berlin to put significant money into easing the housing crisis that is pricing low-income families out of central districts. Stuart Braun reports from Berlin.

Grassroots push law to ease Berlin housing crisis
Stuart Braun, Berlin
28.06.2015

In the shadow of tower blocks, a group of Kreuzberg district locals, tenant organizations, academics and activists have been fighting to make affordable social housing the law in Berlin. Driven by concerns about rising rents and displacement in a city where 85 percent of residents are tenants, they were the force behind today's Berliner Mietenvolksentscheid, or Rent Referendum Berlin.

"Public housing companies have increased rents as if they were private landlords," says Olof Leps, a member of the Mietenvolksentscheid steering committee.

Indeed, rents in Berlin have risen by up to 50 percent over the past five years. Low-income households are now spending as much as two-thirds of their salaries on accommodation. Many are being forced to leave neighborhoods they have lived in for decades. As the capital's population grows by tens of thousands each year, the chronic undersupply of affordable housing is getting worse. The city currently needs more than 120,000 affordable rental homes for people on low incomes who are at risk of poverty, according to Humboldt University urban sociologist Andrej Holm.

The law the activists want would establish a housing development fund to reduce rents in social housing relative to income, promote the construction of low-rent dwellings, purchase privately-owned housing stock, and modernize apartments for accessibility and energy efficiency - yet without drastic rent increases. In addition, the municipal housing corporations would be subject to greater public control, and tenants would be encouraged to participate in housing policy.