Rent prices, rent caps, socialization: Housing Summit 2026

On Thursday, the German Tenants' Association (DMB) and the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) organized the Housing Summit 2026. For over four hours, representatives of the two organizations and various politicians spoke and discussed the question of affordable housing, which the DGB characterized in its call as "one of the central socio-political questions of our time".

It is hardly surprising that the rent peak took place shortly after the House of Representatives election in Berlin. In hardly any other German city is the issue of rent so central. The Left Party's promise to finally implement the referendum to expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. helped the party achieve a historic election victory and a relative majority.

That's not surprising either. Over the last ten years, rents in major cities have increased by an average of 43 percent. Berlin takes first place with an average increase in rental prices of 69 percent. In addition to too few and weak rental price regulations, the decline in the construction of new apartments and the relatively falling number of social housing are also responsible for this. It is estimated that there is a shortage of around 1.4 million housing units in Germany.

Price explosion: rent in large cities increased by 43 percent

However, reducing the enormous rental prices solely to a lack of living space is a short-sighted view. Almost two million apartments are empty across Germany. This means that they are neither rented out nor lived in by the owner themselves. Instead, these apartments are used as speculative properties. This can increase the subsequent rental or sales price or increase the value of other apartments owned.

Due to the size of the problem and because it affects the majority of the population, 89 percent of tenants in large cities in a representative survey were in favor of harsher penalties against rent usury.

The summit was opened on Thursday by Melanie Weber Moritz, President of the German Tenants' Association, and Stefan Körzell, Deputy Chairman of the DGB. Both called for more speed in the federal government's tenancy law reforms. This includes punishing violations of the rent cap and rent usury more severely. They are following a popular line: According to the opinion research institute Forsa, 89 percent of those surveyed are in favor of harsher penalties for so-called “extortionate rents”.

According to the representatives, such violations have long been the norm, especially in metropolitan areas, and in practice often have no consequences. In Berlin, for example, the rent cap is often circumvented by putting a few pieces of furniture in the apartment and then selling it as “furnished”. DGB and DMB are therefore calling for, in addition to a new rent usurious paragraph, violations of the rent cap to be punished with fines.

Melanie Weber Möritz opened the summit with the example of 87-year-old pensioner Maricarmen Abascal, who was evicted in Spain after 70 years when she could no longer afford the massively increased rent. Forced evictions like these are also commonplace in Germany, the DMB President continued. That's why for her the question of "how housing becomes affordable again [...]" is now a decisive question for the election: "The issue of affordable rents must be at the top of the federal government's political agenda."

Rent crisis, new elections and general strike in Spain

Federal Minister of Justice Stefanie Hubig (SPD) was also represented at the summit. There she was aware of the rent problem and promised to take action against rent control violations. At the same time, she took the opportunity to speak out strongly against the socialization of housing stock: “We as the federal government agree that the socialization of housing would not be effective.”

Marco Luczak (CDU) expressed the same opinion at the end of the summit in a panel discussion with other politicians. According to him, excessive regulation would lead to less supply, thus only exacerbating the problem. Caren Lay (Die Linke) sharply contradicted him and pointed out the urgency of clarifying the rent issue: “If we don’t get the rent explosion under control, it will endanger social peace.”

A project by the federal government shows how great the CDU and SPD's fear of the socialization of apartments is: They want to pass a law as quickly as possible that will ban the socialization of apartments. Hubig initially rejected this idea at the housing summit: “In principle, you cannot regulate a ban on socialization.”

The federal government wants to quickly pass a law against housing expropriations

Even if the DGB, DMB, Left Party, CDU and SPD argue over specific questions such as socialization, rent caps, etc., they all have one thing in common: they do not want to tackle the problem at its root. They are all concerned with Germany as a business location, how it can best be managed with other visions like this one, or with getting a lot of votes.

The fact that you can actually make money and speculate by renting out living space, that there are tenants and landlords - that is set in stone for all of them and is not even up for debate. After all, the right to private property is anchored in the basic law of this state, the administration of which the parties and organizations have made it their goal.

The handling of the referendum in Berlin shows how far this fundamental understanding of private ownership of living space goes. The fact that there has to be a discussion at all about whether a democratic referendum should be implemented or not shows the true face of this “democracy”. When in doubt, the interests of landlords, shareholders, entrepreneurs – in short: capitalists – always take precedence over those of workers.

Even supposedly progressive organizations like the DGB cannot be excluded from this; in the end, they too are concerned with the interests of the business bosses. The deputy DGB boss Steffen Körzell made this clear in the run-up to the housing summit: “If high rents prevent employees from taking a job, this exacerbates skilled labor shortages and becomes a problem for companies and the economy as a whole.”

The same applies to the Left Party. What is particularly interesting here is Caren Lay's statement that social peace should not be endangered. “Social peace” describes nothing other than the acceptance of the capitalist order in one form or another. If the socialization of some apartments helps to protect the basic ownership structure, then that is legitimate.