[ "Which cities will follow its lead?" asked one advocate, after
56% of voters told Berlins municipal government to transfer thousands
of homes to public ownership.] [[link removed]]

'FANTASTIC!': BERLIN VOTES TO EXPROPRIATE 240K APARTMENTS FROM
CORPORATE LANDLORDS  
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Kenny Stancil
September 27, 2021
Common Dreams
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_ "Which cities will follow its lead?" asked one advocate, after 56%
of voters told Berlin's municipal government to transfer thousands of
homes to public ownership. _

Supporters of the initiative "Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co."
dance during an election party on September 26, 2021 in Berlin.,
(Photo: Monika Skolimowska/picture alliance via Getty Images)

 

HOUSING JUSTICE ADVOCATES ARE celebrating after residents in Berlin,
Germany—fed up with skyrocketing rents driven in part by speculative
investments in real estate markets—voted
[[link removed]] on
Sunday to socialize roughly 240,000 homes by expropriating apartments
controlled by the city's biggest corporate landlords and transferring
them to public ownership.

By a margin of 56% to 39%, Berliners approved a referendum that
instructs the municipal government to purchase housing from
mega-landlords, or private real estate companies that own more than
3,000 units. If implemented, the move would bring approximately
240,000 homes
[[link removed]],
or about 15% of the city's stock, into public ownership.

The referendum was secured by the Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen
[[link removed]] (Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.)
campaign, which gathered
[[link removed]] 343,000
petition signatures to ensure the measure made its way onto the ballot
for Sunday's elections
[[link removed]] in
Germany. Deutsche Wohnen—the largest residential property owner in
Berlin, with a portfolio
[[link removed]] of
more than 113,000 units—is one of several profit-maximizing
mega-landlords that organizers expect to be covered by the decision.

"For years, Berlin's rental market has been going berserk," the
campaign noted [[link removed]], adding that over
the past decade, rents have risen to a far greater extent than wages.
"That is why more and more people are affected by displacement... We
seek to end the rental insanity."

Progressives worldwide applauded Sunday night's result—made possible
by years of organizing
[[link removed]] by
anti-gentrification activists and housing-for-all campaigners in
Berlin, where over 84%
[[link removed]] of
the population are tenants and "rents have doubled in the last 10 to
15 years," according to
[[link removed]] Jonas
Becker, a spokesperson for Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.

"Fantastic!" tweeted journalist and author Paris Marx. "Now which
cities will follow its lead?"

Progressive International characterized the development as a chance to
"return" hundreds of thousands of homes to the public. That's because,
as journalist Molly Shah wrote
[[link removed]] last
week for _The Real News Network_, "Berlin used to have much more
publicly owned housing, but since reunification of East and West
Germany in 1990 more than 200,000 units have been sold
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private equity and hedge funds."

Notwithstanding the significance of Sunday night's victory, the
referendum to transform corporate landlords' units into public housing
is non-binding, meaning that fierce opposition is expected and
organizers will likely need to put sustained pressure on Berlin's
elected officials in order to ensure the city passes a law that turns
the plan into reality.

_Euronews _reported
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The newly elected parliament has yet to form a coalition, but will
likely be comprised of the outgoing constellation of center-left SPD,
Greens, and the Left Party. Of those, only the Left Party openly
supports expropriation, while the SPD is against it.

Incoming SPD mayor Franziska Giffey has recently categorically ruled
out expropriation. Given that more than one million Berliners voted
for it, compared to the roughly 400,000 that voted for her, Giffey's
hand may be forced by the initiative's popularity.

Joanna Kusiak, an activist for Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen &
Co., warned
[[link removed]] the
city government that "more people voted for our initiative than any
single party in Berlin. We got support from every part of Berlin, and
across the political spectrum."

Kalle Kunkel, another organizer behind the initiative, said
[[link removed]] that
Mayor-elect Giffey "can't just be indifferent to a democratic
decision."

"Sure, she'll try to use all the legal and formal tricks at her
disposal to delay or circumvent its implementation," Kunkel
acknowledged, "but we have over 1,000 activists around the city and
they're not going to be robbed of this victory."

Seven independent legal experts have confirmed that the proposal is
constitutional, according to
[[link removed]] Kusiak.
The campaign invokes Article 15 of the German constitution, a
previously unused eminent domain clause that, according
to _Euronews_, "expressly allows socialization for the public good."

While Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. estimates
[[link removed]] that
the initiative would cost roughly $9.3 billion, the projections of
Berlin's municipal government are closer to $35.1 billion. "The
deciding factor," _Euronews_ noted, "will be if the city has to pay
the market price for the apartments."

Earlier this month, Berlin's government announced
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it would buy nearly 15,000 apartments from two corporate landlords for
$2.9 billion, a move that housing campaigners attributed to the
potential success of the referendum.

Some progressives say
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Berlin's movement to decommodify thousands of homes in one fell swoop
provides important lessons, given that moving units from the private
market—where shelter is increasingly treated as a financial
asset—to the public domain instantly increases the supply of housing
that should, in theory, be permanently affordable.

Based on her conversations with housing organizers in Berlin, Shah
wrote that "the reason so many of the city's establishment have come
out against the law is because of its possible effectiveness in
solving the housing crisis—not only in Berlin, but as an example to
cities all over the world."

Kim Meyer of the Berlin Alliance against Displacement and Rent Madness
told Shah that a successful referendum to decommodify housing in
Germany's capital city "might inspire people to question the current
sellout of their land and cities to global investors and to
[investigate] compulsory purchases of necessities by their
administrations, like housing, water wells, power plants, et cetera,
and to fight for their human right to housing."

_Kenny Stancil is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

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