Rent control doesn’t work, and never will. It is utterly ignorant of economic reality. Economists on almost all sides have admitted this at this point. The only people left clinging on to the idea are politicians who do it to pander to people for votes.
Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
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Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#62I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parking lot around it. Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? Why does the city give out building permits for such buildings? There could easily be room for thirty families on…
The amount of unused space is Berlin is just so massive. Even in Friedrichstraße, which is a hype neighborhood with great amount of activity, you have hundreds of square meters completely unused, with wild plants growing around and random waste accumulating.
From what I understand it is very difficult to do something with that space, either because people refuse to sell or because of bureaucratic red tape.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#63In Belgium they build a lot of social housing on unique land ( I think there's a requirement of 20% social housing on every large-scale building initiative for every city)
Since it's the government that gives it to private contractors , the city builds more social housing than giving land for "normal" housing.
Creating a continuous loop of more expensive prices for normal houses and more social houses ( government sponsored) being build.
It's ridiculous.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#64I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parking lot around it. Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? Why does the city give out building permits for such buildings? There could easily be room for thirty families on…
> I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. The problem is: Berlin can't . There is not much free space for new construction in Berlin proper, with the exception of "Nachverdichtung" such as you propose with apartments over parking lots - and these have the downside that they are horribly expensive, simply because it costs potential developers a lot of money to acquire the land! The solution would be to bu…
Please no suburban sprawl while Berlin still has such low density compared to other cities. There are still lots of fairly central areas with single family homes. Just upzone them and let people get rich selling their land to developers.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#65I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parking lot around it. Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? Why does the city give out building permits for such buildings? There could easily be room for thirty families on…
They are building a massive amount of houses, but they are too expensive for the average Berlin citizen.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#66[deleted]
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#67Will this affect people who have started living in Berlin under the rent cap-system? I hope they won't have to move out all of a sudden, facing sudden, higher rents.
It will affect them.
The court overturning the cap means that renters will have to pay whatever they agreed to in their rental contracts, even if much higher than what they had to pay when the cap was active. Even worse, the landlords may request you pay back the difference you "saved" between the time the cap came into effect and now.
If you entered a new renting agreement post cap, the landlord might have kind of written the cap into the terms as "shadow rents" [other commenters mentioned]. Read your contract very carefully. But even if you're good there, the landlord may try to have the contract invalidated by a court (probably not going to happen), or legally cancel the contract (after the normal notification period required by law) and offer to make a new contract with higher prices.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#68I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parking lot around it. Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? Why does the city give out building permits for such buildings? There could easily be room for thirty families on…
Who would do that? The same people with an incentive to restrict supply? Call me cynical but that's how it works elsewhere.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#69I wish Berlin would just build more housing instead. For example when I cross the street there is a supermarket. It's a single story building with a huge parking lot around it. Why not make it a multistory building with apartments on top of the supermarket and skip the parking space or put it underground? Why does the city give out building permits for such buildings? There could easily be room for thirty families on…
I imagine this might be implicit in your comment, but it's politically much easier to bring in a rent cap ("protecting the hard-working families of Berlin") than hand out building permits ("overdevelopment!") Issuing more building permits also takes a long time to have any effect on rents, so by the time it takes effect the politician who brought it in is likely to be long gone. More permits will only happen if polit…
I'm not convinced that it is politically easier, the rent cap is a very controversial topic (for good reasons, it's really an extreme measure). A fringe may like that talking point, but that's not how you do effective policies.
Re: Berlin rent cap overturned by Germany's top court
#70I don't even live in Germany or Europe, so why am I happy about this?
San Fran also has rent control.
Ya know, the same place that YC is located & many of the current unicorns.
It's interesting to understand how other cities and countries are dealing with similar issues to what we face.