Rent madness | Habersaathstrasse: Endurance run against rent-seeking in the center of Berlin

Rabid rent-seeking: The fight for Habersaathstrasse 40-48 has been going on for years. Photo: nd/David Rojas Kienzle “You have to make arrangements,” says Daniel Diekmann about his living situation. In conversation with “nd” he is sitting on a chair in the stairwell of Habersaathstrasse 48 on the mezzanine floor. Where there should actually be four apartment doors, huge sheets of plywood are screwed into the wall, and construction foam is oozing out of the joints. “The records are almost an improvement,” comments Diekmann ironically. Before, you could never know whether someone wasn't lurking behind the broken doors.

Diekmann still has an apartment. This makes him one of the last remaining tenants in the former Charité nursing home in the Mitte district. There has been no hot water in the house since August 2023. In November 2025, the district heating supply was switched off after the landlord did not extend the contract. And since January 22, 2026, Diekmann no longer has running water in his apartment. At that time, a group of masked people stormed the house and smashed fittings, toilets, sinks and bathtubs in empty apartments. Water ran through the whole house. The owner then had the doors to the then uninhabitable apartments barricaded with plywood panels. Since then, Diekmann has been supplying himself with cold water from canisters that he carries into his apartment. After the heating was turned off, the landlord offered oil radiators as a replacement. But Diekmann doesn't want that because of the high electricity costs.

Most recently, the evacuation of staircase number 44 made headlines. On October 13, 2026, the house was evacuated under the supervision of a large police force and, as before, apartments in Staircase 48 were locked with chipboard. A resident who had no eviction notice was locked up for hours and ultimately had to be freed by the fire department using a turntable ladder. Step by step the building is being made uninhabitable.

The apartments that were boarded up and destroyed in the staircase at number 48 were evacuated a year earlier, in October 2025. Previously, numerous former homeless people lived in the building complex. At the end of 2021, they occupied apartments that had already been empty for a long time. After a deal between the owner and the district, the occupiers were able to stay for a long time.

The building, which was built in 1984 and has several staircases and more than 100 apartments, used to be called Parrot Plate because of its colorful facade. Today the facade is white, with the exception of individual areas in pink and green. Some windows, like the doors, are screwed together with plates from the inside. On the third floor, the panes have been knocked out of the windows and covered with plastic film.

The catastrophic condition of the building is the result of the violent disputes over the apartment block. Under the aegis of the infamous SPD finance senator Thilo Sarrazin, the then state-owned building was privatized in 2006 for around 2.2 million euros and then renovated to improve energy efficiency. In 2017, Arcadia Estates Habersaathstraße 40–48 GmbH bought the building for around ten times the price. The new owner wants to tear down the building and build a new one in its place. But the tenants have to move out to do this, because as long as there are valid rental agreements, demolition cannot take place.

"There is no right to speculate, there is no right to maximum returns."

From 2018 onwards, tenants received so-called termination notices. These are only legal if the owner suffers “significant economic disadvantages” as a result of continuing the rental agreement. But not all tenants have left their apartments. Lawsuits brought by the landlord failed before the courts. A judge's remark - "An apartment is not a share package" - in a hearing in 2023 has now become a household word.

“We have won all the cases in the district court since 2018,” says Diekmann. The next round starts on December 15th. The appeal hearings are then handled in a marathon process before the regional court. For the last five remaining tenancies, a short 30 minutes per negotiation is scheduled. “We have been preparing the processes for three months,” says Diekmann. He is sure that the judgments in favor of the tenants will stand. »Of course we assume that we will win.«

The complaints have significance for the house beyond the individual cases. In response to a resident's request from Diekmann, the district office announced in September 2026 that the demolition permit, which was last extended in December 2025, would be revoked if the regional court confirmed the previous judgments. Then the Arcadia Estates plans would be invalid.

In doing so, the district would fulfill a long-standing demand that is not only made by the tenants. Because the conditions in the house and the actions of the landlord concern many people in the capital. Both the Berlin Left and the Berlin Tenants' Association are calling on the district to appoint a trustee to manage the house instead of the current owner. But the district doesn't think that's possible. Since the relevant requirements were not met, there were no considerations, the district said in response to a parliamentary question in September.

Even with smaller steps, such as restoring the district heating supply, the district sees no room for maneuver. “Only in the event that an apartment is threatened with uninhabitability and the landlord has unsuccessfully requested to fulfill his obligations” is the district housing authority authorized to restore habitability instead of the landlord, the answer states. "In the case of Habersaathstrasse, the landlord credibly assured the housing authority that he would guarantee heat supply via oil radiators before the district heating supply ended."

“People are fed up with all this hesitation and hesitation,” says Diekmann. It is important to him to emphasize the political dimension of the dispute. “It was never just about my apartment, it was always about the bigger picture.” The fight over Habersaathstrasse, which has been going on since it was privatized in 2006, is exemplary for the whole of Berlin and the sell-out of the city. »This is a fight for affordable housing. There is no right to speculate, there is no right to maximum returns.«

Diekmann is quietly hoping for a change in the responsibility of the building city councilor's office and the commitment of the left, which will be in the majority after the elections in September. It is important to him that the newly elected members of the district parliament also know exactly about the fight over Habersaathstrasse and know the problem. “A lighthouse fight like this has to be explained,” he says. But he is certain: "There will be no demolition here."

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