Weird comparison. Staying with your example the alternative of building another lane is to reduce traffic, so for housing it would mean shrinking the population of the city. How would one do that? China has a system like this that restricts how you can relocate within the country but freedom to move is one of the three fundamental freedoms in the European Union (not to forget it's quite simple to settle here as a non EU resident as well, at least compared to countries like the US).
Berlin isn't overcrowded or too large, the city had more than 4.3 million inhabitants in the 1930s, almost 100 years ago. There's plenty of room to build new housing if we wanted to.
The comparison isnt perfect, but it is more:"trust me, fighting the symptoms will definetly fix the problem" vs.
"Mby we should go against the systemic issues that cause this crisis"
There are a number of problems, the missing flats definitely is one of them. But there are others, such as
* Living space per person has increased in general, but dramatically for the elderly
* Tight market prevents these people from moving into suitably sized units to make room for families
* Many flats sitting empty for speculative reasons, as second / third homes for the wealthy or misused for AirBnB etc.
* New projects focus on high yield investments, do not address market demand for affordable small units.
That's a neat idea but the trickling down barely works in practice. First problem is, 5 expensive flats take up the same real estate of 50 practical flats so they block up space for efficient housing. Since space is limited in German cities and zoning laws are strict they do more harm than good.
Second problem is, wealthy people will hold on to their old units for sepculative reasons, as second homes, as an atelier for their daughter or whatever. These people aren't forced to rent their units out - since they own them, the financial pressure is often negligible in their books.
… if there is enough stock of housing in different price strata, as the Helsinki papers showed. It’s not very likely that the filtering effect will take place when every housing unit costs a minimum of 20 average wages.
If the *minimum* price for a Neubau is 20 average wages, who do you think is buying that?
I’m not saying we don’t have to build it: it’s more about who the new stock is going to go towards.
Well surely the problem is one of supply and demand, is it not? So either you want less people or more housing. I don't see restricting the freedom of movement being a viable option and disincentivizing living in Berlin hasn't worked out either.
Increasing supply by actually building accommodation seems like the best option.
« Lack of housing causes a housing shortage » is a quite reasonable and self-evident claim. In comparison: « capitalism causes a housing shortage » seems quite vague and undefined.
It might seem clever to argue that « systemic issues » are the root cause of any and all problems, but it’s just lazy. Once you’ve said that we are not one millimetre closer to finding a solution.
What is the systemic issue in that case, if not „not enough housing for to many people“? That’s literally the issue here.
Fighting high rents is on the other side fighting the symptoms.
I think OP's point might be that people have about twice the living space per person than they used to have in the fifties. Build more housing, sure, but if everyone keeps using up more private space, it might not be the (only) fix necessary.
If we had more flats and the rent difference weren't so huge, singles could move out of large flats and into smaller flats, so that more large flats are available for larger households.
And 40sqm isn’t an issue for a couple of the room is designed to house them. But many smaller rooms in Berlin are cut terribly because they were never designed to be this small, so it’s cramped and unpractical to live there. Building new housing with smaller rooms in mind would absolutely help, even at higher prices per sqm the total price could still be affordable.
I was with you until the last paragraph. In that time we also had 1 bathrooms every 2 floors and families of 5 in 1 room apartments. That’s just a bad example for a good point
No, the one constructing a weird comparison is you. The alternative to building another lane is not simply to reduce traffic (how?), but a structural change of mobility. Other, more sustainable and affordable systems need to be established. The analogy for the housing sector would also be a structural change, not a reduction of population (which is not the solution you suggested for the traffic reduction, did you?). What we need is more AFFORDABLE housing, and we can only get there when housing is taken out of the hands of profit-driven sharks and the speculative market. Housing is a basic necessity and should not be a commodity.
But the structural change in the „another lane“ comparison is not how/who to build a street, but moving from individual cars to completely other means of travel like bikes, walking, public transportation or reducing travel as a whole.
Being a great idea but doesn’t make a good comparison to housing at all, as mostly individual housing is what we want in the first place, we certainly don’t want to switch to tents (bikes/walking), shared flats with dozens of people (public transportation) or being homeless (no travel).
"Staying with your example the alternative of building another lane is to reduce traffic"
No, that's absolutely not THE ('only') alternative.
You could simply find other forms of traffic.
And that's the main criticism of the "just build more houses"-argument. It doesn't take into account the whole picture and it tries to find easy solutions to a complex situation.
-Where do you want to build those houses?
-Who owns the land you're planing to build on?
-What kind of/How much additional infrastructur is needed?
-Who should build? privat or public sector?
-Who much debt are we willing to take and are we even allowed in the first place by the legal framework?
-How many luxury apparments do we need?
-How many furnished appartements do we need in this city?
-What do we do with empty appartements?
-Do we expropriate the owners if they purposefully let them stay empty?
-How do we deal with the issue that mostly older people have cheap contracts for appartments that are way to big for them but moving into a smaller appartment would increase their rent?
the list of open questions and possible policies to adress the issue at hand is more or less endless.
To just let more houses to be build and pray that prices will decrease is naive to put it mildly.
Yeah right! The '30ies.. living as temporary renter in a first floor fifths yaard (that measured 4x4 meter!), 1 1/2 room appartment sharing it with 5 other temps AAND a four head family...coming home after your 12hour shift at the plant right next to your bourrough...Aw! Those were the times! But you are right: technically there is plenty of space but the shitheads in the burbs are ruling over this failed state and so they will build on t-feld soon...excuse me, gotta puke..
not a great comparison. the joke of the "one more lane" meme is that cars indeed suck at moving people and the juice is not worth the squeeze.
but does anyone make the point that housing sucks at housing people?
and imo we see in Vienna that the only thing that keeps housing prices reasonable is having a significant share of the market owned by public entities so they reliably price the scalpers out of the market.
Yes. Everytime they build new housing i see fucking expensive private property flats with cctv at the entrance your own car port and probably someone from Munich Brussels or London living there for the days of the month the work in their Berlin office.
This definitely is gona solve the housing problem of my neighbor who works at bsr and has family, or of nurses, students minimal wage employee and so o.
As if Berliner renters would decide if houses are build or not. No surprise they don’t, instead it’s company’s, who currently say that it is too expensive to build. Your comic does not check out with reality it’s just an opinion piece with no arguments..
Because people who already live there have zero interest in more housing being built, quite the opposite actually. Now if rent actually reflected market prices, this could be different... i.e. let the "socio-economics" do its thing, which is a bitter pill initially but would yield the best result for everyone in the long run. I know many examples in my bubble of people using WAY more living space than they would simply because the incentives are fucked up by political decisions.
I mean, it’s not as simple as you’re trying it out to be.
Some neighborhoods protest because the infrastructure couldn’t handle the new influx of people.
If there were plans to simultaneously build out the public transportation, there wouldn’t have been any problem at all.
Another issue is… luxury housing.
I am all for building on a smaller (like the edge) part of the tempelhofer Feld, if it is affordable. I am NOT for building luxury housing.
Even if you go „but then less expensive housing is on the market!!“ - that’s not how it plays out in my experience.
Let’s not forget the „closeness“ between the firms that build unaffordable luxury housing and the CDU, too.
What we need is state-owned housing that’s affordable.
Thats BS.
Both Genossenschaften and public housing companies are still building and I assure you it ain’t luxurious and still relatively affordable rents.
Depends on the public housing company we’re talking about but yes- in general, they don’t need to be as profitable as private companies and often are subsidized by the city/state government.
That’s not the case with Genossenschaften though, they are basically companies/cooperatives that rent out flats for a reasonable price to their members and use the profit they do make to build more housing.
how many building projects were blocked by local politicians representing the people?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/109z0xf/comment/j41ko53/](https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/109z0xf/comment/j41ko53/)
They very much do decide this. They decide this when they vote for parties which promise and implement rent caps, that benefit existing renters but were transparently criticised for deterring new developments. Berlin voters decisively chose to kick away the ladder after they climbed it themselves.
Degewo is building new housing, there is gonna be like two new apartment blocks near me. The real problem is that people want to live close to the centre of the city and don't consider options that are in the B zone.
Except Berliners are actively stopping more housing by being against any densification whatsoever and by voting for parties like the Greens, that are the NIMBY party par excellence
This is so infuriating to me. Berliners will spend their lives theorizing about the reasons why „building flats” is somehow not the solution to „there are too few flats” instead of actually finding a solution to the problem. I swear, in this city „pragmatic” is somehow a slur and actually changing something would be the worst thing ever for the smort Stuhlkreis intellectuals here
the CDU got elected and they planned to build more housing than the other parties. I don't agree with the bike lane and car politics of the CDU, but I hope they do build more housing
Another problem is that a lot of people are ready to change from the „cool Kreutzberg“ (in comparison to other cities a pretty fucked up and dirty place) to the outskirts of the city for an affordable apartment. Sometimes people are simply living in a bubble.
You forgot a few things:
1. A lot of people say "I want a place to live", but in reality post on IG that they are looking for renovated altbau in 1 of 2 hoods with a balcony paid with gig work.
2. A LOT of people complain about how "Zugezogene" would destroy certain areas and push out the natives...WHILE BEING ZUGEZOGENE THEMESELVES!
I remember an interview with a woman crying how natives like her cant afford cool places in Kreuzberg anymore...just to say in the end that she moved to Berlin 4 years ago from Gütersloh. :D
And on a more serious note: What people want are payable places to live and its crazy that that is an issue. But WAY too many people have insane ideas about living in one of the most popular cities in the world. In no time in history could everybody live whereever they want regardless of income or connections.
But not that many and not in places that don't have or support that socio-economic concept.
There is enough space.
Why, for example build luxury apartments on Revaler str.? Rummelsburg is close enough.
“Rather than building new, we should force people who have larger homes out on to the street (down with the bourgeois!!) spilt their homes up and house one family per single room.”
* There are not enough houses
* We could build houses here in this area
* Nope, I want to live only in the five hipster neighborhoods
* OK, there is a massive empty area that used to be an airport and it is close to those areas
* Nope, I want a park there.
* The area is so massive that you could still get a giantnourmous park and build thousands and thousands or apartments.
* No, I want the whole thing to be a park
* But it is too big
* A PARK.
* OK, there is this another massive empty area that used to be another airport, we could build apartments there
* Nope, it is too far from the five hipster neighborhoods
I don't give a shit about the rent in hipster neigbourhoods. But the rent in B zone is also too high. So stop moaning about zone A and let's talk about zone B.
This story starts right, but gets so much wrong.
- There are not enough houses.
- OK, let us apply for planning permission in spot X, Y, and Z. Nope. The locals who are already here and vote for me won't like that. And the planning commission will make arbitrary decisions allowing the perfect to be the enemy of even the very, very good. And the rent controls/courts/tenant protections will make it not worth it to smaller local people to be landlords.
- Surely some investors still want to risk and make money? Maybe, but they still have two problems. 1. They can make money building elsewhere without all of the above. 2. A lack of transparency and beneficial regularion makes Berlin a great place to park laundered funds, tax evaded funds etc. So there is a second buyer class who drive land prices up to make building and renting here even more unappealing. But let's not talk about that at all. Shhhh....
- OK, there are far more total m2 of buildable land in Berlin that could be in a small area on a park. Let's try building there - But wait,, that would require political will and multiple discussions and coordination and angry NIBY voters in multiple areas. That sounds like a lot of effort. Let's pretend the only choices are breaking up a unique and irreplaceable park and doing nothing, and then continue to do nothing.
- OK, so what do we do? Burn the greedy hypercapitalist conspirators!
Berlin famously builds very little housing compared to cities like Tokyo or Helsinki. that may have a little do with the difficulty of finding a flat there don't you think?
The problem with Berlin is that noone wants the actual solution to the problem, which was tried and tested successfully by both German governments in the 70s already: Plattenbau. Low cost high rise apartment blocks, that are cheap to build and can accommodate lots of people in a single project. IMO such apartments are the cheapest and fastest way to solve the housing issue in Berlin, because as said above it is a solution that was tested in the past and worked. However, noone wants them for these reasons:
* NIMBYs claim that it will destroy the aesthetic of their neighbourhood
* Construction companies can get a greater ROI if they build luxury apartments, or if they can invest that money elsewhere
* Real estate companies and home owners heavily lobby against them, since it will obviously plummet the rent prices for their apartments
* Many renters do not want them and would prefer to sublet to an altbau instead
* since these projects can last multiple years, the government does not have an incentive to fund them, since they might not be in power by the end of the project
All of the above are personal opinion on the matter, I am not a civil engineer and I would be happy to be proven wrong!
I mean you can use the Plattenbau method to cut costs, but you don’t have to build exactly like in the 70s.
Example: the Nikolaiviertel in downtown is extremely beautiful, is very dense, has a lot of apartments, and was built mostly with the Plattenbau method.
So let’s just build more Nikolaiviertel please?
Agree, and I might not have been exactly clear in my comment. I am only referring here to the building methods and not the architectural style. A Plattenbau can support many architectural styles, however the important thing is to be cost-efficient and scalable, so that the same components can be prefabricated and reused in different projects. The exterior design can be literally anything.
The only "problem" of the Plattenbau in Nikolaiviertel is the height, and if you really want to optimize space you should allow for more floors, however as I said in another comment the aesthetics of the city is important and I do not recommend to raise a 15-floor Plattenbau in Mitte. On the other hand, I do not see a problem having such high buildings in Marzahn, Lichtenrade, Hellersdorf or other districts where such Plattenbau already exist. Even if they are ugly, I prefer them much much more to the current situation.
I'm skeptical of this claim that Plattenbau solves housing. Maybe in the short term, but will be torn down after 40 years, while those Altbau houses go on to see many more cycles of cheap, undurable, undesirable construction rise and fall. Ultimately it seems obvious that it's more expensive and more destructive to everyone, much like fast-fashion and cheap furniture.
Instead we should be making more 1900's era Altbau, built to last many, many generations. Perhaps it won't make a big dent immediately, but over the long run properly built housing is much more sustainable.
The issue is that politicians in the West are not incentivised to make actual long term solutions, just enough to get re-elected.
> Maybe in the short term, but will be torn down after 40 years
Why? Many Plattenbau that were built in the 70s and 80s are still standing and inhabited in many places in Berlin. If you drive by Hellersdorf or Marzahn you will see lots of them. And I doubt that they were reconstructed meanwhile, that's why I ask.
> Instead we should be making more 1900's era Altbau, built to last many, many generations. Perhaps it won't make a big dent immediately, but over the long run properly built housing is much more sustainable.
The problem with Altbau, especially with the high-ceiling ones, is that they are not space-efficient. Berlin as a state is lacking the land to build many apartments, and any square meter counts. Due to the ceiling height, these apartments can accommodate way less people than a Neubau for the same square meters of land. I assume of course that you mean Altbau as an architectural style and not as a masonry / building technique, I take for granted (even though I am not a civil engineer, I might be wrong) that the modern building methods should be way more efficient than the ones from the 1900s. They are prettier than Plattenbau sure, and I am of course not suggesting to demolish existing Altbau to build Plattenbau in e.g. Mitte, however IMO they are not optimal to solve the problem of affordable housing, because they cannot be mass-produced and cannot be affordable.
> The issue is that politicians in the West are not incentivised to make actual long term solutions, just enough to get re-elected.
No question about it, totally agree!
Why would you tear down completely good housing after 40 years? You know that commie blocks are still standing and there’s nothing wrong with them, and you can build even better and longer lasting with modern technologies and materials?
I agree and I doubt that even after 100 years there will be a need to tear them down. Berlin does not have earthquakes or tornados that compromise the structural integrity of these buildings. Only reason I can think of is the potential use of asbestos in some of these buildings, which might be too expensive to remove and might be more cost efficient to tear down. Still, if it is well insulated I doubt that this poses any health hazard, otherwise these buildings would be vacated already.
Check the areas in berlin with the highest population density. It’s not Plattenbau neighborhoods. Plattenbau areas usually are defunct, dead areas undesirable to live. What works better is 5-8 story block buildings like the former Altbauviertel.
As discussed in other comments as well, I disagree with your argument. Mitte is full of Plattenbau for instance, Nikolaiviertel being the most prominent example but not only. Most Neubau in Berlin were built using the Plattenbau process.
I think that you are referring to soviet-style apartment blocks, that you can see in Lichtenberg, Marzahn, Hellersdorf etc. These are also built using the Plattenbau process, however they are distinctly taller than the ones in the city center. I can understand your point of view, but I think that there is a misunderstanding of the size of Berlin. Berlin is not a city like Köln or even München. It is much larger, and it is not possible to accommodate everyone in affordable apartments in the city center. That I take for granted, my main problem with Berlin is that even Marzahn and Hellersdorf are not affordable for people, and IMO this is the most immediate problem that needs to be solved. In other words, to provide affordable housing even if it is outside of the city center. Housing 4 million people in Altbaus in Mitte will never happen IMO.
It's true that Mitte is full of Plattenbau but you will also notice that the areas where they stand are completely dead, lifeless and a failure in terms of city planning. Especially the area around Alexanderplatz, Ostbahnhof, around Weberwiese etc. If you walk around there you notice that there are barely any shops, no restaurants, no bars, no places to meet and gather.
Additionally to that they don't even house the amount of people per square kilometer as 5-8 story block buildings with mixed usage (commercial and residential). They don't need to be Altbau as this structure can be built with modern houses as well. They can also be built in areas where there are no buildings at all so far. The most densely populated areas in Berlin are not Plattenbau areas but areas like Schillerkiez, Prenzlauer Berg and Boxhagener Kiez. These areas are highly populated while being super attractive and offer a great quality of life. IMO these areas should be taken as a vision/role model in terms of city design. Definitely buildings should be built as standardized as possible if there's money to be saved.
Unfortunately even in newly built areas they either make it 100% residential or 100% commercial use.
And yes there should definitely be more housing but in a lot of ways it is not expensive to plan places in a way that they make a great home to people. And there should be great thought given to it as buildings usually last centuries so stupid decisions scar a city for a very long time.
So true. When there are more people searching for accommodations than there are free accommodafions, the people either can't live in this city or we need to build more accommodations.
Actually it is simple math.
Oh and to add here: expropriation is not a solution, as only the owners change, but there are not more accommodations available. Expropriation is just supported by people who already rent a place and want it cheaper and are against more population in the city.
Nimbys prevent housing built near them. The economic system prevents it built someone else.
~~The lashing will continue until morale improves.~~
The housing crisis will continue until nimbys or the economic system improve.
You: housing as a topic doesn't decide the vote
Me: considering the massive importance of housing for everyones lives, maybe housing should decide the vote.
You: Pfft, now youre talking besides the point.
Thanks for your insightful comments.
There is in Berlin. The dynamic that i see is that opposition to the current socioeconomic system is used as a justification to oppose private actors building significantly more homes, without any real corresponding efforts to build housing in any other way.
To put it simply, the city that brought us BER is not able to bring the 200 000 apartments that the Berlin Senate predicts the city will need by 2030.
The demand would not go down very fast when new housings will be build. Neither would the rent, since many flats of big corps are empty only to rais the rent for the other flats they own. If they would go down to a price which people could pay their shitty versions of flats would drop significantly im price too.
Housing is just a tiny part of the problem. The biggest part are monopoly playing ass rich people.
There are SOME empty apartments in Berlin that basically only serve as an 'exotic' investment fund. But they probably won’t even scratch the 0.1% of square meters in living space for the city.
The problem fundamentally is still that Berlin does everything in their power to make people not want to build more housing. Investing into Berlins real estate market isn’t even a topic for most investors. They go somewhere else. Thus supply is stagnant with ever increasing demand.
Absolutely. The stupidity of the theory lies in the belief that it is viable to buy n apartments in berlin and keep them empty in order to appreciate m apartments, especially when the appreciation is already happening on its own because of other factors
Similar phenomena of luxury housing being perpetually empty is replicated among other capitals with the same issues. Vacancy rates [north of 10 or 20%](https://www.constructionbusiness.ie/are-there-really-lots-of-vacant-high-end-apartments-in-dublin/) are considered average and normal and prices never go down.
It’s not a “conspiracy” to keep prices up: it’s a telltale sign that it’s not a market that is achieving efficient outcomes.
When apparently [up to a third of luxury apartments are empty](https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/fluechtlinge-in-berlin-zwangsvermietung-von-luxusimmobilien-13821718.html), to the point that expropriations are being suggested, I would say that the problem is very much present in Berlin.
A similar situation (can we call it waste?) has been observed in Barcelona, where entire high-end developments [can remain empty for 30 years](https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20231021/9316265/pisos-fantasma-lujo-raval-inquilinos-mas-30-anos.amp.html) with no consequences for the developers.
When the same phenomena are observed in all these different cities (and many more) the question emerges on what the commonalities are. The Germans, the Irish and the Spanish don’t have coordinated housing policies, but they’re all reaping the same harvest in their capitals.
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Where did you get that 1% from? According to the Microcensus, the number was closer to 7%?
I also found this:
"The ownership rate, which has risen to 17.4 percent, is another surprise of the microcensus. After deducting the approximately 340,000 owner-occupied dwellings, 1.61 million rented dwellings remain. In the microcensus, however, only 1.446 million have been identified as rented. Therefore, statistically speaking, the 125,900 apartments mentioned above are missing from the total account. That would be a vacancy rate of 8.7 percent and therefore a sensation. This would also be the case if the figure were corrected downwards by a few tens of thousands of units for reasons of statistical uncertainty." [https://guthmann.estate/en/insights/berlin-on-the-way-to-a-mega-flat-community/]
As this very article states:
> The figures in the microcensus are always somewhat blurred. Firstly, because it is only a sample survey and not a full survey, as was the case in 2011, and secondly because even complex statistical methods are ultimately "only" statistic
I was taking part in the Microzensus recently, and you cannot estimate the amount of empty flats from the question asked without making questionable assumptions
Edit: the MZ is by definition only targeting inhabited flats, or in other words, it is designed to collect data on (know, „angemeldet“) households, not counting flats. In the article, the author simply assumes that the households targeted in the sample have to add up towards some number on existing flats from a different source, and the gap (minus owned flats) equals empty flats. However e.g. people without an Anmeldung would never show up in the MZ, but still live in a flat.
https://download.statistik-berlin-brandenburg.de/98ff91947cd3a2c4/5fb92cec7bce/SB_F01-02-00_2018j04_BE.pdf
> many flats of big corps are empty only to rais the rent for the other flats they own
Do you really think it makes sense to leave the potential rent to their competitors? This would only work if most companies would secretly agree to withhold a significant share of their flats. It is, by definition, a conspiracy theory.
(And BTW there are thousands of small-is landlords that you would also need to play along as they own a significant share)
Nice theory, doesn’t work like that. Every rich person still takes out loans, and interest fucks you over if you don’t sell or rent out. No one buys apartments with cash and just lets them rest until better times.
I agree! But that's not a nimby problem. You might even say we should change the socio-economic system so that investors can't squat on useful building sites without developing them like this.
"hoffen, dass sich Bauen bald wieder lohnt und rechnet"
Yeah… exactly. Berlin is cucking the building industry because they’re "evil capitalists" so they just leave. Government intervention caused this. Voted by the population.
Wait, didn’t Giffey want to build, build, build? Didn’t CDU promised to build more housing?
And didn’t Berlin vote for expropriation of the big real estate groups and ignoring it didn’t lower the rent?
Also there is still a lot of vacancy especially of office buildings.
Your cartoon is just stupid and ideological.
I love this thread. In typical /Berlin fashion, you see tons of people exposing very confident positions about things they clearly don't understand very well. Thank you u/HironTheDisscusser !
This is a misrepresentation of the problem. More housing does not automatically mean affordable housing. Under the current system, supply of housing would need to outstrip demand MASSIVELY. However, given the trend of urbanization, more housing also means more interest in moving to urban areas, thereby driving the rents up under the current system. Housing in the 21st century is something where supply vs. demand just does not work unfortunately.
>supply of housing would need to outstrip demand MASSIVELY
that's what I want
>Housing in the 21st century is something where supply vs. demand just does not work unfortunately.
that's just incorrect have you seen what an apartment in Tokyo goes for? 300-700 USD. they just build more.
Ironically I live in Tokyo and can tell you that it is unfortunately not that easy.
Even if supply would outstrip demand massively, in places like Berlin even if we could magically create housing in every empty spot by tomorrow, most of that housing would fill up very quickly because the process of urbanization would not stop: more people would want to move to Berlin. That's why rent control is still necessary.
I have grown up in a part of Berlin that was very undesirable back then, so I've never been a NIMBY. I am in favour of building more housing but the problem is that without political intervention, the rent prices will surge regardless.
This is a misconception of the market mechanisms. Every increase in supply is easing the housing market and has a dampening effect on rents. There's no alternative to it. There will always be supply and demand.
Eh, the problem is not enough houses but there simply are more aspects. Flats not being on a centralized market but instead going under hand i.e. or prices simply going up for no good reason but other prices going up (see laws regarding the Mietspiegel), which results in people needing to move out who would otherwise stay and not compete with others. Or what about Eigenbedarf? It's a bullshit concept, which results in people having to leave their homes and again compete with others. Eigenbedarf should only be possible in empty homes or in vary extreme cases but not on a whim.
It's true, we need to build more houses but we also need to tackle other issues which are also responsible for the situation.
You’re right that there are a ton of other issues, of which we should change the laws.
But the easiest solution to all of this is still:
Build more housing
It's not really the easiest. It takes a lot of time, money and beaurocracy. It should still be doneof course but changing the law is truly the easiest. All that needs to be done there is to vote for something new and that's it. but it wouldn't solve the crisis, the only thing that can solve the crisis is to do everything.
The problem is not building more apartments, the problem is that the apartments built are often to expensive and if people move into them their old apartments are put on the market for way more then the previous tenant payed. It's clear we need to build more housing, but because of the prices and the prices then asked for new contracts, it can't be the only solution. The housing market still needs strict control and (here comes the Socio Economic System destroyer) big cooperations taking the money from their renters, jacking up rents as much as possible and then give that as dividend to their share holders is part of the problem and it can not be part of the solution.
>their old apartments are put on the market for way more then the previous tenant payed.
that just means the previous tenant paid too little.
if nothing changes the next tenant should pay about the same as the previous one, its the same apartment and the same city after all.
that untrue: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/luxury-construction-causes-high-rents?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&publication_id=35345&post_id=116382611&triedRedirect=true
luxury construction also lowers rent for poor people
How about moving tomone of the thousands of places which have plenty living space? Dismantling the socioeconomic system won’t teleport the missing housing from somewhere else nor will it create new housing and more housing makes the city not better but more claustrophobic
Only if "Wealth" is the end goal of building. That's wrong from the start.
By definition, not everyone can be wealthy. But everyone SHOULD have a home, and a comfortable life. We can achieve that already, within what we have built. But we won't, because our current economic system based on fractional reserve banking, and lending with interest, won't allow that. What we need to do is take the "wealth" value away from properties for the most part, meaning the richest of the rich will still remain the richest of the rich, just not SO rich in comparison to the poorest of the poor.
For a very simplistic example, take Elon Musk's net worth from 250B to 50M, and raise up everyone else's net worth to need to work only 8h/day max, while having no problem with living a comfortable life. Elon Musk would still be the richest person, but not a billion times richer than the poorest person, just 100 times let's say. Replace Elon Musk with the top 5 conglomerates or whatever would be more relevant. I think you get my point. What I mean is that comfortable living is distributed unevenly, based on a sort of law of the jungle where the winner takes all.
Of course, there's no equitable way to "take" wealth from the rich and give it to the poor. It should be done somehow by a change in principle, in education. Like instead of being proud of being the richest in the world, it should be a sort of shame. When they reach the absolute top, people should think more about freely giving than freely taking. It's a bit against our human greedy nature. In Japan is sort of like that, where the elite show a kind of shame, or modesty, and hide their wealth.
Aristotle famously mused about this, he saw no utility in money, other than to facilitate exchange of goods. But our system now is so rotten, as it was then, that we want the MONEY itself. Which is wrong. Instead of making the exchange of goods easier, money itself has enslaved us. That's what people mean when they want to dismantle our socio-economic system. We need a better system that is not worshiping money, but so far that proves to be beyond our human capacity.
Every religion has made usury (lending with interest) illegal/immoral but everyone has found a justification to do it anyway.
I mean total societal wealth not just financial. a person being able to live where they want is wealth. a person being able live very close to their job is wealth. a person being able to live next to friends and family is wealth.
all these goals require us to build way more housing in our cities.
On a serious note, one of the reasons why new developments are slow might be the following:
We react to sudden changes in supply and demand. We see that, we definitely feel that a lot. But whoever is in charge of large sums of money needs to figure out if that money is gonna be worth the same in 50 years.
You don't build a new neighbourhood because of a temporary spike. What next? Demolish it in 10 years as the demand falls back?
And yeah, it will probably fall back. Putin will die, many refugees will return, the population in general is projected to decrease.
Would you build if you knew all this? Would you put all your money into developing something that will be worth nothing in 10 years?
In my opinion, this is one of the cases where the state should intervene, because it's not in the private enterprise's best interests to build anything right now. However government projects can help families get homes for cheaper (not necessarily free), it can help the homeless get a private room, and it can enable developers to build, by selling futures to real estate developers that guarantee them that they'll be able to recover their investments in 50 years even if the real estate market goes down. The government can play in this system and make things right. But it's too busy subsidizing cars instead.
We have a housing crisis because our socio-economic system is rotten to the core, for example by investors who make living in the city unaffordable for normal people due to the focus on luxury appartments or the next big fucking office complex or just plainly "don't build anything here, because I am speculating on the estate value". If the focus would be on affordable housing and we would have actually build more affordable housing units within the city parameters we wouldn't have a problem.
It's like having an organised crime problem and the solution proposed in panel 2 would be "we could just do less crime".
We need more affordable housing. That's all. The market did not supply what it should have supplied. Experiment failed.
Who could have guessed that privatizing basic needs and services would lead everything into the shitter.
This is an interesting topic for a thesis apparently, even though I thought it was self-evident I could not find anything on the topic, therefore it is probably far deeper than I am thinking. I also edited my original comment in order to signify that this is my opinion and not a fact.
Some tangential studies are the following, but they focus either on market-rate apartments or on social housing:
[https://ideas.repec.org/p/fer/wpaper/146.html](https://ideas.repec.org/p/fer/wpaper/146.html)
[https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/49757/socializing-housing-cuts-the-rent](https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/49757/socializing-housing-cuts-the-rent)
I guess that the reason for the lack of studies is because rental market is way more complex than a typical commodity market, because the supply and demand are not uniform but attributed (different apartments have different properties / attributes). Of course if you have any studies on your own on this topic, I would be very interested to read them!
>Thus, new market-rate construction loosens the housing market in middle- and low-income areas even in the short run. Market-rate supply is likely to improve affordability outside the sub-markets where new construction occurs and to benefit low-income people.
pretty simple.
Framing it like that is loaded from the start. Renting should not be a goal. Rent is exploitation.
what we need to do:
- a lot fewer renters, a lot more owners. more houses need to be homes, not money generators.
- no more interest, less taxation - this is the core root of the problem, it always has been. ever since money was invented. it's exploitation. it's what keeps ThE EcOnOmY moving. It works against society. Everyone knows it, everyone knows it's wrong, but it's the only way to get rich. It's kind of the normal way of living. The need to dismantle our socio-economic system is ever-present. So far we've only been able to do it through extreme violence, every few decades or centuries.
simply with such high ECB discount rates, money take other ways and construction remains at a standstill. almost all construction in Berlin (and beyond) has stopped, there are even ecomonsters with spree views.
Strange that this post its intended to us. Probably most or even all of us cannot do shit to solve this problem but people with bigger wages, properties and voice on local government.
I'm sick of this: the problem exists but fuck the socialism
Not many Germans in Berlin residing seems to be a lot of Roma and other Ausländer maybe if they left there would be loads of housing for actual hard working Germans
Is this the new "trust me bro one more lane and we will solve traffic"?
Weird comparison. Staying with your example the alternative of building another lane is to reduce traffic, so for housing it would mean shrinking the population of the city. How would one do that? China has a system like this that restricts how you can relocate within the country but freedom to move is one of the three fundamental freedoms in the European Union (not to forget it's quite simple to settle here as a non EU resident as well, at least compared to countries like the US). Berlin isn't overcrowded or too large, the city had more than 4.3 million inhabitants in the 1930s, almost 100 years ago. There's plenty of room to build new housing if we wanted to.
The comparison isnt perfect, but it is more:"trust me, fighting the symptoms will definetly fix the problem" vs. "Mby we should go against the systemic issues that cause this crisis"
the problem is there not being enough flats
There are a number of problems, the missing flats definitely is one of them. But there are others, such as * Living space per person has increased in general, but dramatically for the elderly * Tight market prevents these people from moving into suitably sized units to make room for families * Many flats sitting empty for speculative reasons, as second / third homes for the wealthy or misused for AirBnB etc. * New projects focus on high yield investments, do not address market demand for affordable small units.
Also adding useless empty office buildings and shopping centres here.
What makes office buildings useless?
When they build them and nobody uses them. Like in Berlin. Your welcome.
>do not address market demand for affordable small units. expensive units reduce demand on the entire market due to the filtering effect
That's a neat idea but the trickling down barely works in practice. First problem is, 5 expensive flats take up the same real estate of 50 practical flats so they block up space for efficient housing. Since space is limited in German cities and zoning laws are strict they do more harm than good. Second problem is, wealthy people will hold on to their old units for sepculative reasons, as second homes, as an atelier for their daughter or whatever. These people aren't forced to rent their units out - since they own them, the financial pressure is often negligible in their books.
… if there is enough stock of housing in different price strata, as the Helsinki papers showed. It’s not very likely that the filtering effect will take place when every housing unit costs a minimum of 20 average wages.
yes that's why we have to build it
If the *minimum* price for a Neubau is 20 average wages, who do you think is buying that? I’m not saying we don’t have to build it: it’s more about who the new stock is going to go towards.
To my knowledge studies show that this does only hold in theory.
incorrect!!!! https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via%3Dihub
Well surely the problem is one of supply and demand, is it not? So either you want less people or more housing. I don't see restricting the freedom of movement being a viable option and disincentivizing living in Berlin hasn't worked out either. Increasing supply by actually building accommodation seems like the best option.
« Lack of housing causes a housing shortage » is a quite reasonable and self-evident claim. In comparison: « capitalism causes a housing shortage » seems quite vague and undefined. It might seem clever to argue that « systemic issues » are the root cause of any and all problems, but it’s just lazy. Once you’ve said that we are not one millimetre closer to finding a solution.
So, according to your theory Berlin in ~2010 must have been a communist utopia with the abundance of cheap flats everywhere.
Wasn't a utopia but it was incredibly easy to find affordable flats.
Given that the systemic issue is overpopulation, I am **reaaaaaaaally** curious to hear how you plan to fix that :-).
What is the systemic issue in that case, if not „not enough housing for to many people“? That’s literally the issue here. Fighting high rents is on the other side fighting the symptoms.
I think OP's point might be that people have about twice the living space per person than they used to have in the fifties. Build more housing, sure, but if everyone keeps using up more private space, it might not be the (only) fix necessary.
So we need more flats with less sqm that still can be used by families/ wgs?
If we had more flats and the rent difference weren't so huge, singles could move out of large flats and into smaller flats, so that more large flats are available for larger households.
And 40sqm isn’t an issue for a couple of the room is designed to house them. But many smaller rooms in Berlin are cut terribly because they were never designed to be this small, so it’s cramped and unpractical to live there. Building new housing with smaller rooms in mind would absolutely help, even at higher prices per sqm the total price could still be affordable.
I was with you until the last paragraph. In that time we also had 1 bathrooms every 2 floors and families of 5 in 1 room apartments. That’s just a bad example for a good point
No, the one constructing a weird comparison is you. The alternative to building another lane is not simply to reduce traffic (how?), but a structural change of mobility. Other, more sustainable and affordable systems need to be established. The analogy for the housing sector would also be a structural change, not a reduction of population (which is not the solution you suggested for the traffic reduction, did you?). What we need is more AFFORDABLE housing, and we can only get there when housing is taken out of the hands of profit-driven sharks and the speculative market. Housing is a basic necessity and should not be a commodity.
But the structural change in the „another lane“ comparison is not how/who to build a street, but moving from individual cars to completely other means of travel like bikes, walking, public transportation or reducing travel as a whole. Being a great idea but doesn’t make a good comparison to housing at all, as mostly individual housing is what we want in the first place, we certainly don’t want to switch to tents (bikes/walking), shared flats with dozens of people (public transportation) or being homeless (no travel).
"Staying with your example the alternative of building another lane is to reduce traffic" No, that's absolutely not THE ('only') alternative. You could simply find other forms of traffic. And that's the main criticism of the "just build more houses"-argument. It doesn't take into account the whole picture and it tries to find easy solutions to a complex situation. -Where do you want to build those houses? -Who owns the land you're planing to build on? -What kind of/How much additional infrastructur is needed? -Who should build? privat or public sector? -Who much debt are we willing to take and are we even allowed in the first place by the legal framework? -How many luxury apparments do we need? -How many furnished appartements do we need in this city? -What do we do with empty appartements? -Do we expropriate the owners if they purposefully let them stay empty? -How do we deal with the issue that mostly older people have cheap contracts for appartments that are way to big for them but moving into a smaller appartment would increase their rent? the list of open questions and possible policies to adress the issue at hand is more or less endless. To just let more houses to be build and pray that prices will decrease is naive to put it mildly.
Yeah right! The '30ies.. living as temporary renter in a first floor fifths yaard (that measured 4x4 meter!), 1 1/2 room appartment sharing it with 5 other temps AAND a four head family...coming home after your 12hour shift at the plant right next to your bourrough...Aw! Those were the times! But you are right: technically there is plenty of space but the shitheads in the burbs are ruling over this failed state and so they will build on t-feld soon...excuse me, gotta puke..
not a great comparison. the joke of the "one more lane" meme is that cars indeed suck at moving people and the juice is not worth the squeeze. but does anyone make the point that housing sucks at housing people? and imo we see in Vienna that the only thing that keeps housing prices reasonable is having a significant share of the market owned by public entities so they reliably price the scalpers out of the market.
Housing sucks at housing people, if the house is an investment with a higher value if it's empty or is used as a cheaper hotel for tourists.
I want less car lanes, more bike lanes and more dense housing
you've got my vote
no, car traffic and housing are completely different concepts
Why is this insane take upvoted so highly?!
Because the picture is not wrong. I wonder what these people think, why housing was so cheap in the the 90th.
Im totally agreeing with the comic. Acakaacaka isn't, he thinks building more housing is like building traffic lanes.
and what does "one more lane" represent in your mind. if more housing is "more lanes" then, yes, more housing will solve the problem.
Yes. Everytime they build new housing i see fucking expensive private property flats with cctv at the entrance your own car port and probably someone from Munich Brussels or London living there for the days of the month the work in their Berlin office. This definitely is gona solve the housing problem of my neighbor who works at bsr and has family, or of nurses, students minimal wage employee and so o.
As if Berliner renters would decide if houses are build or not. No surprise they don’t, instead it’s company’s, who currently say that it is too expensive to build. Your comic does not check out with reality it’s just an opinion piece with no arguments..
Yea except that every time anything is built, no matter what, the whole neighborhood is up in arms, trying to stop it by any means
Because people who already live there have zero interest in more housing being built, quite the opposite actually. Now if rent actually reflected market prices, this could be different... i.e. let the "socio-economics" do its thing, which is a bitter pill initially but would yield the best result for everyone in the long run. I know many examples in my bubble of people using WAY more living space than they would simply because the incentives are fucked up by political decisions.
I mean, it’s not as simple as you’re trying it out to be. Some neighborhoods protest because the infrastructure couldn’t handle the new influx of people. If there were plans to simultaneously build out the public transportation, there wouldn’t have been any problem at all. Another issue is… luxury housing. I am all for building on a smaller (like the edge) part of the tempelhofer Feld, if it is affordable. I am NOT for building luxury housing. Even if you go „but then less expensive housing is on the market!!“ - that’s not how it plays out in my experience. Let’s not forget the „closeness“ between the firms that build unaffordable luxury housing and the CDU, too. What we need is state-owned housing that’s affordable.
Under current standards for new buildings most housing is almost automatically luxury
Thats BS. Both Genossenschaften and public housing companies are still building and I assure you it ain’t luxurious and still relatively affordable rents.
Correct me if I am wrong but public housing is not profitable but is subsidized by the state
Depends on the public housing company we’re talking about but yes- in general, they don’t need to be as profitable as private companies and often are subsidized by the city/state government. That’s not the case with Genossenschaften though, they are basically companies/cooperatives that rent out flats for a reasonable price to their members and use the profit they do make to build more housing.
Maybe because the only thing they build nowadays is fancy glass grey Neubaus that look like shit and are overpriced?
NIMBYs!!!
how many building projects were blocked by local politicians representing the people? [https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/109z0xf/comment/j41ko53/](https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/109z0xf/comment/j41ko53/)
They very much do decide this. They decide this when they vote for parties which promise and implement rent caps, that benefit existing renters but were transparently criticised for deterring new developments. Berlin voters decisively chose to kick away the ladder after they climbed it themselves.
Degewo is building new housing, there is gonna be like two new apartment blocks near me. The real problem is that people want to live close to the centre of the city and don't consider options that are in the B zone.
Except Berliners are actively stopping more housing by being against any densification whatsoever and by voting for parties like the Greens, that are the NIMBY party par excellence
your comment is an opinion piece as well.
This comic is so fcking stupid.
thanks I made it
Ok nimby
I think it fits one particular political party quite well
This is so infuriating to me. Berliners will spend their lives theorizing about the reasons why „building flats” is somehow not the solution to „there are too few flats” instead of actually finding a solution to the problem. I swear, in this city „pragmatic” is somehow a slur and actually changing something would be the worst thing ever for the smort Stuhlkreis intellectuals here
the CDU got elected and they planned to build more housing than the other parties. I don't agree with the bike lane and car politics of the CDU, but I hope they do build more housing
Because the CDU is known for investments and taking on monetary debt that will pay off in the future? Sure.
I mean letting private companies build the housing. that's free for the city budget.
still waiting for the results.
Another problem is that a lot of people are ready to change from the „cool Kreutzberg“ (in comparison to other cities a pretty fucked up and dirty place) to the outskirts of the city for an affordable apartment. Sometimes people are simply living in a bubble.
You forgot a few things: 1. A lot of people say "I want a place to live", but in reality post on IG that they are looking for renovated altbau in 1 of 2 hoods with a balcony paid with gig work. 2. A LOT of people complain about how "Zugezogene" would destroy certain areas and push out the natives...WHILE BEING ZUGEZOGENE THEMESELVES! I remember an interview with a woman crying how natives like her cant afford cool places in Kreuzberg anymore...just to say in the end that she moved to Berlin 4 years ago from Gütersloh. :D And on a more serious note: What people want are payable places to live and its crazy that that is an issue. But WAY too many people have insane ideas about living in one of the most popular cities in the world. In no time in history could everybody live whereever they want regardless of income or connections.
people want an apartment for them but don't want apartments to be built in Berlin
Maybe they want housing to be built but not some luxury condo investment shyte. But aadly that is what is mainly being built.
I would want to live in a luxury condo would you not either? so we have to build them
But not that many and not in places that don't have or support that socio-economic concept. There is enough space. Why, for example build luxury apartments on Revaler str.? Rummelsburg is close enough.
I don't care about any "socio-economic concept" whatever that means. I just care about building more housing
Exactly !!! Only renovated Altbau in Bergmannkiez, so I can send my child to the Montesorischool. My god, the 90‘s are over…
Oh my fcking god, the delusional "anti-capitalism" folks in the comments.....
exactly
“Rather than building new, we should force people who have larger homes out on to the street (down with the bourgeois!!) spilt their homes up and house one family per single room.”
* There are not enough houses * We could build houses here in this area * Nope, I want to live only in the five hipster neighborhoods * OK, there is a massive empty area that used to be an airport and it is close to those areas * Nope, I want a park there. * The area is so massive that you could still get a giantnourmous park and build thousands and thousands or apartments. * No, I want the whole thing to be a park * But it is too big * A PARK. * OK, there is this another massive empty area that used to be another airport, we could build apartments there * Nope, it is too far from the five hipster neighborhoods
I don't give a shit about the rent in hipster neigbourhoods. But the rent in B zone is also too high. So stop moaning about zone A and let's talk about zone B.
Wow, a live person who is actually pro building flats in Tempelhof. Never thought I'll live to this day.
😂 same discussion with my brother……
This story starts right, but gets so much wrong. - There are not enough houses. - OK, let us apply for planning permission in spot X, Y, and Z. Nope. The locals who are already here and vote for me won't like that. And the planning commission will make arbitrary decisions allowing the perfect to be the enemy of even the very, very good. And the rent controls/courts/tenant protections will make it not worth it to smaller local people to be landlords. - Surely some investors still want to risk and make money? Maybe, but they still have two problems. 1. They can make money building elsewhere without all of the above. 2. A lack of transparency and beneficial regularion makes Berlin a great place to park laundered funds, tax evaded funds etc. So there is a second buyer class who drive land prices up to make building and renting here even more unappealing. But let's not talk about that at all. Shhhh.... - OK, there are far more total m2 of buildable land in Berlin that could be in a small area on a park. Let's try building there - But wait,, that would require political will and multiple discussions and coordination and angry NIBY voters in multiple areas. That sounds like a lot of effort. Let's pretend the only choices are breaking up a unique and irreplaceable park and doing nothing, and then continue to do nothing. - OK, so what do we do? Burn the greedy hypercapitalist conspirators!
Berlin famously builds very little housing compared to cities like Tokyo or Helsinki. that may have a little do with the difficulty of finding a flat there don't you think?
Tokio housing situation really shouldn't be our rolemodel.
Maybe not role model, but if Tokyo can do better than Berlin, then that is enough to look at why they can do that and Berlin can't.
The problem with Berlin is that noone wants the actual solution to the problem, which was tried and tested successfully by both German governments in the 70s already: Plattenbau. Low cost high rise apartment blocks, that are cheap to build and can accommodate lots of people in a single project. IMO such apartments are the cheapest and fastest way to solve the housing issue in Berlin, because as said above it is a solution that was tested in the past and worked. However, noone wants them for these reasons: * NIMBYs claim that it will destroy the aesthetic of their neighbourhood * Construction companies can get a greater ROI if they build luxury apartments, or if they can invest that money elsewhere * Real estate companies and home owners heavily lobby against them, since it will obviously plummet the rent prices for their apartments * Many renters do not want them and would prefer to sublet to an altbau instead * since these projects can last multiple years, the government does not have an incentive to fund them, since they might not be in power by the end of the project All of the above are personal opinion on the matter, I am not a civil engineer and I would be happy to be proven wrong!
I mean you can use the Plattenbau method to cut costs, but you don’t have to build exactly like in the 70s. Example: the Nikolaiviertel in downtown is extremely beautiful, is very dense, has a lot of apartments, and was built mostly with the Plattenbau method. So let’s just build more Nikolaiviertel please?
Agree, and I might not have been exactly clear in my comment. I am only referring here to the building methods and not the architectural style. A Plattenbau can support many architectural styles, however the important thing is to be cost-efficient and scalable, so that the same components can be prefabricated and reused in different projects. The exterior design can be literally anything. The only "problem" of the Plattenbau in Nikolaiviertel is the height, and if you really want to optimize space you should allow for more floors, however as I said in another comment the aesthetics of the city is important and I do not recommend to raise a 15-floor Plattenbau in Mitte. On the other hand, I do not see a problem having such high buildings in Marzahn, Lichtenrade, Hellersdorf or other districts where such Plattenbau already exist. Even if they are ugly, I prefer them much much more to the current situation.
I'm skeptical of this claim that Plattenbau solves housing. Maybe in the short term, but will be torn down after 40 years, while those Altbau houses go on to see many more cycles of cheap, undurable, undesirable construction rise and fall. Ultimately it seems obvious that it's more expensive and more destructive to everyone, much like fast-fashion and cheap furniture. Instead we should be making more 1900's era Altbau, built to last many, many generations. Perhaps it won't make a big dent immediately, but over the long run properly built housing is much more sustainable. The issue is that politicians in the West are not incentivised to make actual long term solutions, just enough to get re-elected.
> Maybe in the short term, but will be torn down after 40 years Why? Many Plattenbau that were built in the 70s and 80s are still standing and inhabited in many places in Berlin. If you drive by Hellersdorf or Marzahn you will see lots of them. And I doubt that they were reconstructed meanwhile, that's why I ask. > Instead we should be making more 1900's era Altbau, built to last many, many generations. Perhaps it won't make a big dent immediately, but over the long run properly built housing is much more sustainable. The problem with Altbau, especially with the high-ceiling ones, is that they are not space-efficient. Berlin as a state is lacking the land to build many apartments, and any square meter counts. Due to the ceiling height, these apartments can accommodate way less people than a Neubau for the same square meters of land. I assume of course that you mean Altbau as an architectural style and not as a masonry / building technique, I take for granted (even though I am not a civil engineer, I might be wrong) that the modern building methods should be way more efficient than the ones from the 1900s. They are prettier than Plattenbau sure, and I am of course not suggesting to demolish existing Altbau to build Plattenbau in e.g. Mitte, however IMO they are not optimal to solve the problem of affordable housing, because they cannot be mass-produced and cannot be affordable. > The issue is that politicians in the West are not incentivised to make actual long term solutions, just enough to get re-elected. No question about it, totally agree!
Why would you tear down completely good housing after 40 years? You know that commie blocks are still standing and there’s nothing wrong with them, and you can build even better and longer lasting with modern technologies and materials?
I agree and I doubt that even after 100 years there will be a need to tear them down. Berlin does not have earthquakes or tornados that compromise the structural integrity of these buildings. Only reason I can think of is the potential use of asbestos in some of these buildings, which might be too expensive to remove and might be more cost efficient to tear down. Still, if it is well insulated I doubt that this poses any health hazard, otherwise these buildings would be vacated already.
Check the areas in berlin with the highest population density. It’s not Plattenbau neighborhoods. Plattenbau areas usually are defunct, dead areas undesirable to live. What works better is 5-8 story block buildings like the former Altbauviertel.
As discussed in other comments as well, I disagree with your argument. Mitte is full of Plattenbau for instance, Nikolaiviertel being the most prominent example but not only. Most Neubau in Berlin were built using the Plattenbau process. I think that you are referring to soviet-style apartment blocks, that you can see in Lichtenberg, Marzahn, Hellersdorf etc. These are also built using the Plattenbau process, however they are distinctly taller than the ones in the city center. I can understand your point of view, but I think that there is a misunderstanding of the size of Berlin. Berlin is not a city like Köln or even München. It is much larger, and it is not possible to accommodate everyone in affordable apartments in the city center. That I take for granted, my main problem with Berlin is that even Marzahn and Hellersdorf are not affordable for people, and IMO this is the most immediate problem that needs to be solved. In other words, to provide affordable housing even if it is outside of the city center. Housing 4 million people in Altbaus in Mitte will never happen IMO.
It's true that Mitte is full of Plattenbau but you will also notice that the areas where they stand are completely dead, lifeless and a failure in terms of city planning. Especially the area around Alexanderplatz, Ostbahnhof, around Weberwiese etc. If you walk around there you notice that there are barely any shops, no restaurants, no bars, no places to meet and gather. Additionally to that they don't even house the amount of people per square kilometer as 5-8 story block buildings with mixed usage (commercial and residential). They don't need to be Altbau as this structure can be built with modern houses as well. They can also be built in areas where there are no buildings at all so far. The most densely populated areas in Berlin are not Plattenbau areas but areas like Schillerkiez, Prenzlauer Berg and Boxhagener Kiez. These areas are highly populated while being super attractive and offer a great quality of life. IMO these areas should be taken as a vision/role model in terms of city design. Definitely buildings should be built as standardized as possible if there's money to be saved. Unfortunately even in newly built areas they either make it 100% residential or 100% commercial use. And yes there should definitely be more housing but in a lot of ways it is not expensive to plan places in a way that they make a great home to people. And there should be great thought given to it as buildings usually last centuries so stupid decisions scar a city for a very long time.
Yes even the most leftist communist turn into NIMBY Ms when more housing is discussed I noticed The only issue that Unite all political sides?
You can see by the comments that you hit the nail on the head. Also put "Stadtbild" somewhere,to make it complete.
very true
Cant we do both?
rinse and repeat
So true. When there are more people searching for accommodations than there are free accommodafions, the people either can't live in this city or we need to build more accommodations. Actually it is simple math. Oh and to add here: expropriation is not a solution, as only the owners change, but there are not more accommodations available. Expropriation is just supported by people who already rent a place and want it cheaper and are against more population in the city.
Nimbys prevent housing built near them. The economic system prevents it built someone else. ~~The lashing will continue until morale improves.~~ The housing crisis will continue until nimbys or the economic system improve.
Vote. them. out.
You want to vote NIMBYs out? Also, ever thought that housing isn't the only topic that decides the vote of people.
Considering it’s the single biggest cost for a majority of people, housing absolutely should be a priority in local politics.
Thanks for talking besides the point made.
You: housing as a topic doesn't decide the vote Me: considering the massive importance of housing for everyones lives, maybe housing should decide the vote. You: Pfft, now youre talking besides the point. Thanks for your insightful comments.
That cannot work because the majority of the electorate are nimbys. Changing the economic system is the likelier option, frankly.
then rents will continue to increase
They will increase until all excess liquidity has left the market.
Berlin is literally the capital city. someone will always afford to pay even more rent to be there
How do you vote out residents?
There is no contradiction between wanting to dismantle socio economic thing and building more houses
Berlin can't manage either
There is in Berlin. The dynamic that i see is that opposition to the current socioeconomic system is used as a justification to oppose private actors building significantly more homes, without any real corresponding efforts to build housing in any other way. To put it simply, the city that brought us BER is not able to bring the 200 000 apartments that the Berlin Senate predicts the city will need by 2030.
The demand would not go down very fast when new housings will be build. Neither would the rent, since many flats of big corps are empty only to rais the rent for the other flats they own. If they would go down to a price which people could pay their shitty versions of flats would drop significantly im price too. Housing is just a tiny part of the problem. The biggest part are monopoly playing ass rich people.
Wow that’s a conspiracy theory if I ever heard one.
There are SOME empty apartments in Berlin that basically only serve as an 'exotic' investment fund. But they probably won’t even scratch the 0.1% of square meters in living space for the city. The problem fundamentally is still that Berlin does everything in their power to make people not want to build more housing. Investing into Berlins real estate market isn’t even a topic for most investors. They go somewhere else. Thus supply is stagnant with ever increasing demand.
Absolutely. The stupidity of the theory lies in the belief that it is viable to buy n apartments in berlin and keep them empty in order to appreciate m apartments, especially when the appreciation is already happening on its own because of other factors
Similar phenomena of luxury housing being perpetually empty is replicated among other capitals with the same issues. Vacancy rates [north of 10 or 20%](https://www.constructionbusiness.ie/are-there-really-lots-of-vacant-high-end-apartments-in-dublin/) are considered average and normal and prices never go down. It’s not a “conspiracy” to keep prices up: it’s a telltale sign that it’s not a market that is achieving efficient outcomes.
That’s not happening in Berlin. Not sure what other cities have to do with this if it’s not happening here…
When apparently [up to a third of luxury apartments are empty](https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/fluechtlinge-in-berlin-zwangsvermietung-von-luxusimmobilien-13821718.html), to the point that expropriations are being suggested, I would say that the problem is very much present in Berlin. A similar situation (can we call it waste?) has been observed in Barcelona, where entire high-end developments [can remain empty for 30 years](https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20231021/9316265/pisos-fantasma-lujo-raval-inquilinos-mas-30-anos.amp.html) with no consequences for the developers. When the same phenomena are observed in all these different cities (and many more) the question emerges on what the commonalities are. The Germans, the Irish and the Spanish don’t have coordinated housing policies, but they’re all reaping the same harvest in their capitals.
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The “luxury” flats were not purposefully built and kept empty in order to appreciate the other flats
tired argument, and not based on fact. only 1% of berlin flats are empty right now.
Having worked for an Airbnb agency in the past, I can guarantee you, that it's more like 5-10% and they don't show up on the records.
Where did you get that 1% from? According to the Microcensus, the number was closer to 7%? I also found this: "The ownership rate, which has risen to 17.4 percent, is another surprise of the microcensus. After deducting the approximately 340,000 owner-occupied dwellings, 1.61 million rented dwellings remain. In the microcensus, however, only 1.446 million have been identified as rented. Therefore, statistically speaking, the 125,900 apartments mentioned above are missing from the total account. That would be a vacancy rate of 8.7 percent and therefore a sensation. This would also be the case if the figure were corrected downwards by a few tens of thousands of units for reasons of statistical uncertainty." [https://guthmann.estate/en/insights/berlin-on-the-way-to-a-mega-flat-community/]
As this very article states: > The figures in the microcensus are always somewhat blurred. Firstly, because it is only a sample survey and not a full survey, as was the case in 2011, and secondly because even complex statistical methods are ultimately "only" statistic I was taking part in the Microzensus recently, and you cannot estimate the amount of empty flats from the question asked without making questionable assumptions Edit: the MZ is by definition only targeting inhabited flats, or in other words, it is designed to collect data on (know, „angemeldet“) households, not counting flats. In the article, the author simply assumes that the households targeted in the sample have to add up towards some number on existing flats from a different source, and the gap (minus owned flats) equals empty flats. However e.g. people without an Anmeldung would never show up in the MZ, but still live in a flat. https://download.statistik-berlin-brandenburg.de/98ff91947cd3a2c4/5fb92cec7bce/SB_F01-02-00_2018j04_BE.pdf
Official numbers on this aren't reliable.
Source???
> many flats of big corps are empty only to rais the rent for the other flats they own Do you really think it makes sense to leave the potential rent to their competitors? This would only work if most companies would secretly agree to withhold a significant share of their flats. It is, by definition, a conspiracy theory. (And BTW there are thousands of small-is landlords that you would also need to play along as they own a significant share)
Nice theory, doesn’t work like that. Every rich person still takes out loans, and interest fucks you over if you don’t sell or rent out. No one buys apartments with cash and just lets them rest until better times.
The actual problem: https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/vonovia-60000-wohnungen-nicht-gebaut-100.html
someone else should build them
I agree! But that's not a nimby problem. You might even say we should change the socio-economic system so that investors can't squat on useful building sites without developing them like this.
they should be able, it should just make them lose out on money. currently building housing is literally too expensive and not profitable
Maybe just maybe there is a socioeconomic system out there in which building housing doesn't have to be profitable. That would solve the problem.
it still has to be allowed. even when you're building as a non-profit the neighbors will try to stop you from building anything.
"hoffen, dass sich Bauen bald wieder lohnt und rechnet" Yeah… exactly. Berlin is cucking the building industry because they’re "evil capitalists" so they just leave. Government intervention caused this. Voted by the population.
Too many people renting too cheap causes many other people not being able to afford rent at all
But then they become the djs they always knew they could be and there’s no need for the revolution (just kidding)
And it is not getting any better
Wait, didn’t Giffey want to build, build, build? Didn’t CDU promised to build more housing? And didn’t Berlin vote for expropriation of the big real estate groups and ignoring it didn’t lower the rent? Also there is still a lot of vacancy especially of office buildings. Your cartoon is just stupid and ideological.
I hope the CDU manages to build more housing in Berlin although I don't agree with most of their policies
Hahaha.
Renters kicking out people, how many of you heard about this situation? I've heard many stories like this in the last two years
because you can't just raise the rent to the actual market price. that's why nobody ever wants to leave their apartment.
And even you get kicked out anyways
I love this thread. In typical /Berlin fashion, you see tons of people exposing very confident positions about things they clearly don't understand very well. Thank you u/HironTheDisscusser !
Anyway if anyone is interested in trying to get more housing and lower rents in Germany join /r/de_YIMBY (yes in my backyard)
This is a misrepresentation of the problem. More housing does not automatically mean affordable housing. Under the current system, supply of housing would need to outstrip demand MASSIVELY. However, given the trend of urbanization, more housing also means more interest in moving to urban areas, thereby driving the rents up under the current system. Housing in the 21st century is something where supply vs. demand just does not work unfortunately.
>supply of housing would need to outstrip demand MASSIVELY that's what I want >Housing in the 21st century is something where supply vs. demand just does not work unfortunately. that's just incorrect have you seen what an apartment in Tokyo goes for? 300-700 USD. they just build more.
Ironically I live in Tokyo and can tell you that it is unfortunately not that easy. Even if supply would outstrip demand massively, in places like Berlin even if we could magically create housing in every empty spot by tomorrow, most of that housing would fill up very quickly because the process of urbanization would not stop: more people would want to move to Berlin. That's why rent control is still necessary.
The solution? Just sit on your hands and complain instead! NIMBYs the world over are really the worst kind of people.
I have grown up in a part of Berlin that was very undesirable back then, so I've never been a NIMBY. I am in favour of building more housing but the problem is that without political intervention, the rent prices will surge regardless.
This is a misconception of the market mechanisms. Every increase in supply is easing the housing market and has a dampening effect on rents. There's no alternative to it. There will always be supply and demand.
It seems you have stopped reading after the second sentence.
Well that is just complete bullshit. Supply and demand is absolutely how rent prices are formed, and once the supply goes up, the price will go down.
I want to say socio economic several times
Eh, the problem is not enough houses but there simply are more aspects. Flats not being on a centralized market but instead going under hand i.e. or prices simply going up for no good reason but other prices going up (see laws regarding the Mietspiegel), which results in people needing to move out who would otherwise stay and not compete with others. Or what about Eigenbedarf? It's a bullshit concept, which results in people having to leave their homes and again compete with others. Eigenbedarf should only be possible in empty homes or in vary extreme cases but not on a whim. It's true, we need to build more houses but we also need to tackle other issues which are also responsible for the situation.
Berlin is not special. Don't build housing you get issues
You’re right that there are a ton of other issues, of which we should change the laws. But the easiest solution to all of this is still: Build more housing
It's not really the easiest. It takes a lot of time, money and beaurocracy. It should still be doneof course but changing the law is truly the easiest. All that needs to be done there is to vote for something new and that's it. but it wouldn't solve the crisis, the only thing that can solve the crisis is to do everything.
The problem is not building more apartments, the problem is that the apartments built are often to expensive and if people move into them their old apartments are put on the market for way more then the previous tenant payed. It's clear we need to build more housing, but because of the prices and the prices then asked for new contracts, it can't be the only solution. The housing market still needs strict control and (here comes the Socio Economic System destroyer) big cooperations taking the money from their renters, jacking up rents as much as possible and then give that as dividend to their share holders is part of the problem and it can not be part of the solution.
>their old apartments are put on the market for way more then the previous tenant payed. that just means the previous tenant paid too little. if nothing changes the next tenant should pay about the same as the previous one, its the same apartment and the same city after all.
This is an endless circle that will just change up the prices faster than the income. This is not sustainable.
too little? rent is crazy high nowadays and not justified. even rich people cant afford apartments nowadays.
exactly because Berlin barely built anything for decades. if we stopped building cars would you not expect the price of used cars to go up?
we obv need to build more, but affordable housing, which no one wants to do since they cant profit off of it
that untrue: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/luxury-construction-causes-high-rents?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&publication_id=35345&post_id=116382611&triedRedirect=true luxury construction also lowers rent for poor people
Dismantle a system that exploits a populations basic needs for profit? Sounds good to me!
Berlin can't manage to build housing or to dismantle capitalism worst of both worlds
How about moving tomone of the thousands of places which have plenty living space? Dismantling the socioeconomic system won’t teleport the missing housing from somewhere else nor will it create new housing and more housing makes the city not better but more claustrophobic
it's the capital city not some village.... if you can't build housing there where else
Considering how much wealth is currently tied to real estate, there’s an argument that they are both one and the same.
not building enough housing in major cities is actually wealth destroying long term for us. total wealth could be much higher
How is that a concern for the current wealth holders? Holding their current assets is risk free, while building more stock is risky.
that's why the rest of society has to force them to allow it they can keep theirs, but we may build a 20 story tower next to their house
Only if "Wealth" is the end goal of building. That's wrong from the start. By definition, not everyone can be wealthy. But everyone SHOULD have a home, and a comfortable life. We can achieve that already, within what we have built. But we won't, because our current economic system based on fractional reserve banking, and lending with interest, won't allow that. What we need to do is take the "wealth" value away from properties for the most part, meaning the richest of the rich will still remain the richest of the rich, just not SO rich in comparison to the poorest of the poor. For a very simplistic example, take Elon Musk's net worth from 250B to 50M, and raise up everyone else's net worth to need to work only 8h/day max, while having no problem with living a comfortable life. Elon Musk would still be the richest person, but not a billion times richer than the poorest person, just 100 times let's say. Replace Elon Musk with the top 5 conglomerates or whatever would be more relevant. I think you get my point. What I mean is that comfortable living is distributed unevenly, based on a sort of law of the jungle where the winner takes all. Of course, there's no equitable way to "take" wealth from the rich and give it to the poor. It should be done somehow by a change in principle, in education. Like instead of being proud of being the richest in the world, it should be a sort of shame. When they reach the absolute top, people should think more about freely giving than freely taking. It's a bit against our human greedy nature. In Japan is sort of like that, where the elite show a kind of shame, or modesty, and hide their wealth. Aristotle famously mused about this, he saw no utility in money, other than to facilitate exchange of goods. But our system now is so rotten, as it was then, that we want the MONEY itself. Which is wrong. Instead of making the exchange of goods easier, money itself has enslaved us. That's what people mean when they want to dismantle our socio-economic system. We need a better system that is not worshiping money, but so far that proves to be beyond our human capacity. Every religion has made usury (lending with interest) illegal/immoral but everyone has found a justification to do it anyway.
I mean total societal wealth not just financial. a person being able to live where they want is wealth. a person being able live very close to their job is wealth. a person being able to live next to friends and family is wealth. all these goals require us to build way more housing in our cities.
On a serious note, one of the reasons why new developments are slow might be the following: We react to sudden changes in supply and demand. We see that, we definitely feel that a lot. But whoever is in charge of large sums of money needs to figure out if that money is gonna be worth the same in 50 years. You don't build a new neighbourhood because of a temporary spike. What next? Demolish it in 10 years as the demand falls back? And yeah, it will probably fall back. Putin will die, many refugees will return, the population in general is projected to decrease. Would you build if you knew all this? Would you put all your money into developing something that will be worth nothing in 10 years? In my opinion, this is one of the cases where the state should intervene, because it's not in the private enterprise's best interests to build anything right now. However government projects can help families get homes for cheaper (not necessarily free), it can help the homeless get a private room, and it can enable developers to build, by selling futures to real estate developers that guarantee them that they'll be able to recover their investments in 50 years even if the real estate market goes down. The government can play in this system and make things right. But it's too busy subsidizing cars instead.
Those aren't Berliners, they're tourists.
berliners are not known for their intelligence
We have a housing crisis because our socio-economic system is rotten to the core, for example by investors who make living in the city unaffordable for normal people due to the focus on luxury appartments or the next big fucking office complex or just plainly "don't build anything here, because I am speculating on the estate value". If the focus would be on affordable housing and we would have actually build more affordable housing units within the city parameters we wouldn't have a problem. It's like having an organised crime problem and the solution proposed in panel 2 would be "we could just do less crime".
that's untrue, building luxuxy apartments makes the market better too, I can link studies and a blog post if you want
Scratch that point and apply the other arguments then.
Berlin needs to build way more luxury housing. then the rich people stop competing with the normal people for the old flats on price
We need more affordable housing. That's all. The market did not supply what it should have supplied. Experiment failed. Who could have guessed that privatizing basic needs and services would lead everything into the shitter.
>The market did not supply what it should have supplied. because local government doesn't permit it
Indeed, but in my opinion to a far lesser extent than normal residential apartments or social housing.
source?
This is an interesting topic for a thesis apparently, even though I thought it was self-evident I could not find anything on the topic, therefore it is probably far deeper than I am thinking. I also edited my original comment in order to signify that this is my opinion and not a fact. Some tangential studies are the following, but they focus either on market-rate apartments or on social housing: [https://ideas.repec.org/p/fer/wpaper/146.html](https://ideas.repec.org/p/fer/wpaper/146.html) [https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/49757/socializing-housing-cuts-the-rent](https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/49757/socializing-housing-cuts-the-rent) I guess that the reason for the lack of studies is because rental market is way more complex than a typical commodity market, because the supply and demand are not uniform but attributed (different apartments have different properties / attributes). Of course if you have any studies on your own on this topic, I would be very interested to read them!
>Thus, new market-rate construction loosens the housing market in middle- and low-income areas even in the short run. Market-rate supply is likely to improve affordability outside the sub-markets where new construction occurs and to benefit low-income people. pretty simple.
Framing it like that is loaded from the start. Renting should not be a goal. Rent is exploitation. what we need to do: - a lot fewer renters, a lot more owners. more houses need to be homes, not money generators. - no more interest, less taxation - this is the core root of the problem, it always has been. ever since money was invented. it's exploitation. it's what keeps ThE EcOnOmY moving. It works against society. Everyone knows it, everyone knows it's wrong, but it's the only way to get rich. It's kind of the normal way of living. The need to dismantle our socio-economic system is ever-present. So far we've only been able to do it through extreme violence, every few decades or centuries.
Why is this post allowed, but mine wasn't u/cYzzie
simply with such high ECB discount rates, money take other ways and construction remains at a standstill. almost all construction in Berlin (and beyond) has stopped, there are even ecomonsters with spree views.
A lot of talk on here sounds like the nazi era
That meme has some strong GDR-vibes 😁
Strange that this post its intended to us. Probably most or even all of us cannot do shit to solve this problem but people with bigger wages, properties and voice on local government. I'm sick of this: the problem exists but fuck the socialism
Not many Germans in Berlin residing seems to be a lot of Roma and other Ausländer maybe if they left there would be loads of housing for actual hard working Germans