In the election campaign for the Red City Hall on Wednesday, the Berlin Greens dared to make a move with which they challenged all other parties.

“Only we have the solution,” said her top candidate Bettina Jarasch, who is still unknown to many Berliners.

She presented a plan to solve perhaps the most burning problem in the capital: to create enough affordable housing for people with low and middle incomes.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Jarasch suggests a so-called rental protection umbrella.

It is supposed to align the Berlin housing market socially, to end the tough competition between landlords and tenants, and to “pacify the city”.

Based on the example of the Austrian capital Vienna, more than 50 percent public-benefit rental apartments are to be built in Berlin.

The private housing companies should conclude a pact with the city for this.

Alternative to the referendum

This is "a new political way" to get more affordable living space quickly and legally, said Jarasch.

She wants to avoid the kind of socialization that the Berlin referendum “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.” is aiming for.

As a last resort, this socialization remains on the negotiating table for the Greens.

By joining the rental protection umbrella, all private housing companies commit themselves to a five-year rent moratorium and inexpensive re-leases that only allow increases within the scope of inflation compensation. In addition, they exclude the conversion of rental apartments into owner-occupied apartments, accept upper limits for the surcharge for modernizations and grant the right to exchange apartments among all apartments in the rental protection umbrella. In addition, no dividends are to be paid out for three years, the money should instead flow into maintenance, renovation and new construction.

In return, the companies are to receive exclusive access to urban land as well as low-interest loans, public grants and subsidies for ecological modernization and reduced ground rent. For the large housing companies this is "a unique opportunity to regain lost trust," said Jarasch.

The Berlin referendum demands that all corporations that have more than 3,000 rental apartments are expropriated. The initiative had recently collected 350,000 signatures from Berliners, which means that there will be a referendum on September 26, when the House of Representatives is elected in addition to the Bundestag. The Greens have left it up to their members how they behave when voting. Jarasch said she would tick the box for yes, but thought the solution now proposed was the right one.

You do not differentiate between large and small landlords, but between fair and unfair. If she becomes the governing mayor, she will negotiate the pact immediately after her election. If it does not materialize, then she is ready to “take further steps towards socialization”. But she wants to avoid "protracted battles in front of the courts".

In Berlin, according to the latest polls, the Greens are ahead with 22 percent, but only a few percentage points ahead of the CDU and the SPD. Their top candidates, the previous member of the Bundestag Kai Wegner (CDU) and the former Federal Minister for Family Affairs Franziska Giffey (SPD), rely on the example of Hamburg, where a round table of private and public housing companies has succeeded in decisively pushing ahead with the new building. Jarasch said that it is not just about new construction, but also about affordable rents in the housing stock, which is why the Hamburg model falls short.

In Berlin, housing has become the most important political issue due to the rapid rise in rents in recent years.

The referendum on the expropriation of large housing companies had motivated the red-red-green Senate to introduce a rent cap at the beginning of 2020, which, however, was rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court in March of this year as incompatible with the Basic Law because the state did not have the legislative competence to do so.

In Berlin, the Greens, in which the left wing has a majority, are striving to continue the coalition with the SPD and the Left Party under Green leadership.

SPD top candidate Giffey seems to be relying more on a coalition with the CDU and FDP.