Berlin – With a protest in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin, the rent freeze campaign wants to demonstrate this Thursday for better protection of households against rising rents. The reason: From the point of view of the campaign, protection against rising rents is still neglected in the exploratory paper of the SPD, Greens and FDP. “We call on the SPD and the Greens to put extreme pressure on in the coalition negotiations for more tenant protection,” says Monika Schmid-Balzert, spokeswoman for the rent freeze campaign. “Both parties have spoken out in their election programs for a limitation of the rent increase in the existing building.”
The campaign, in which around 140 initiatives, alliances and organizations from all over Germany participate, calls for a nationwide rent freeze for six years and further reforms. Supporters include local tenant initiatives, the German Tenants’ Association and the German Trade Union Confederation. “The rent freeze must be included in the coalition agreement,” demands Schmid-Balzert. It seems like “a bad joke” for tenants if the existing tenant protection rules are only to be evaluated and extended, as stated in the exploratory paper. “The last few years have clearly shown that these rules are by no means sufficient,” says Schmid-Balzert. “Nothing needs to be evaluated.” With a four meter high rent freeze hand, the initiative wants to show in front of the Reichstag building that things cannot go on as before.
Housing industry with unusual advance
The campaign for a rent freeze indicates that the SPD, Greens and FDP write in their exploratory paper that the progressive coalition wants to “set the course for a decade of social, ecological, economic, digital and societal renewal”. The most pressing social problem is “that of the ever increasing rents and the displacement of people from their homes”, says campaign spokeswoman Monika Schmid-Balzert: Affordable housing is “the social question of our time”.
The housing industry, meanwhile, came up with a different approach. The Federal Association of German Housing and Real Estate Companies GDW welcomed the formation of a new “Ministry for Good Housing” and its new minister on Wednesday. An unconventional act, because of course there is no such ministry. “Our idea of the Ministry for good living should generate attention for the long overdue bundling of the central issues around affordable living and building in a separate ministry”, said association spokesman Andreas Schichel. “After the construction sector was pushed from ministry to ministry as an unpopular appendage in the past legislative periods, it is time to make the social issue of our time a top priority.”