"A Frontal Attack on the Constitution": DWE on Berlin's Housing Fight

How does Berlin respond to a clear democratic decision? For nearly five years, we've seen one consistent answer: block, delay, obfuscate, sabotage, and hope everyone just forgets it ever happened.

Back in September 2021, over a million Berliners voted in the "Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen" referendum to socialise housing from profit-seeking landlords. The vote was decisive: 59.1% backed the measure, which was aimed at ending exploitative rent-seeking and reversing course on a housing crisis that was already biting hard.

What happened next has been an ongoing case of political cowardice dressed up as due diligence. First, the city's politicians decided they couldn't possibly act on something this radical without referring it to an expert commission (nobody wanted a repeat of the Mietendeckel, the rent cap that had been struck down by the constitutional court a year earlier). So when, in June 2023, the commission delivered its answer — the measure was entirely legal — you'd have thought that would have cleared the path. Instead, the obfuscation continued: the SPD proposed a framework law that sounded like socialisation but was designed to fall short of it. The Greens backed the referendum publicly while doing little to fight for it, and the issue fell by the wayside after the repeat election that gave Berlin its first CDU governing mayor in over twenty years.

Meanwhile, the rental market has only gotten worse. Asking rents in Berlin are up 42% since 2022, a considerable worsening of a crisis that already had the city in a dire state when the referendum was called.

If you want to get elected in Berlin, it would be very stupid not to make this your main issue.