Expropriating German housing: Do you already live or are you still looking?

Berlin has a problem: for many years it has been almost impossible to find an apartment, and if it is, the rent makes you poor. It is a veritable double crisis: too little supply and too high prices. The Berlin referendum “Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen” (DWE referendum) of 2021, with an impressive 59 percent approval, provides the democratic legitimacy for the plan to withdraw more than 200,000 Berlin apartments from large real estate groups such as Vonovia for the purpose of maximizing profits.

By renting at inflated prices, they have so far turned money into much more money for their private partners. The business model is far too successful to voluntarily move out the housing stock. That is why socialization is necessary according to Article 15 of the Basic Law. Although socialization would not solve the supply crisis, it would certainly turn things around in the price crisis.

holds a doctorate in historians from the Humboldt University in Berlin. He researches and publishes, among other things, on the emergence of the social market economy.

Central questions lie behind the dispute over socialization and expropriation: Who is allowed to dispose of socially acquired wealth? How can economic power be prevented from turning into political power? How can catastrophic developments be stopped?

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The federal government made up of the CDU and SPD reacted at the beginning of July with the plan to ban the “nationalization of private rental housing stocks” by federal law. This will probably fail before the Federal Constitutional Court, but as a delaying measure it would probably work. For this cheap tactical success, the coalition is undertaking a history-blind attack on the central foundations of the Federal Republic.

After the war ended in 1945, lessons were learned from the misery of the 19th century, from two world wars and, in particular, from the Nazi dictatorship. From this, the overall consensus developed to set strict limits on the “capitalist pursuit of profit and power” of “private capital” (Ahlen program of the CDU, 1947). Never again should owners of land or the means of production be given the opportunity to subordinate society to their interests and thereby lead it to catastrophe. In the 1949 election campaign, the victorious CDU summed it up: “Anyone who has power on the market […] must not be free.”

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This minimal consensus found its way into the party programs and into the economic policy discourse of the post-war years - and into the Basic Law with Articles 15 and 14 (“Property is an obligation”). Even state constitutions today still provide for the transfer of “energy companies” or certain large companies and market-dominant companies into public ownership. It would be very welcome if the current federal government did not have to go through such cruel experiences as the founding generation of the Federal Republic.

The social market economy is also an economic policy reflection of the wish that the experiences of our contemporaries should never be repeated. She is a child of the post-war period: her siblings were not competition and the free market, but socialization and anti-capitalism. In the 1949 election campaign, the CDU advertised: "The 'social market economy' stands [...] in contrast to the so-called 'free economy' of a liberalist character." The trust in God in “the market” is in reality precisely the negative foil from which the social market economy distanced itself.

The government of Merz, Klingbeil and Söder wants to dispose of the central economic policy insights of the Basic Law with its reform paper. They can't even provide a good reason for this attack on the founding consensus of the Federal Republic: the vague claim that socialization would endanger private housing construction is pure speculation. And even if that were the case: cooperatives, the state, unions and families can also build affordable housing. This in turn is historically proven.

Since 1990 at the latest, everything in Germany that was not nailed down has been privatized - and desocialized - including the railways, the healthcare system and countless apartments. One result of this is the situation on the Berlin housing market, among other things. Now, of all things, deprivatization through socialization, painting dangers for tenants is ideology. Both the concrete material self-interests of the Berlin population and the desired rescue of a democratic community speak in favor of limiting the economic and political power of large corporations, including in the housing sector. This is exactly what the clear majority of Berliners voted for in 2021, at just over 59 percent.

But despite compelling historical and current arguments, the Left is so far the only party that is fighting decisively for the implementation of the DWE referendum. As is so often the case, the AfD is completely against the interests of its own electorate on this issue, while the CDU and SPD are really going all out at the federal level with the planned ban on corporatization for the profit interests of Vonovia, Heimstaden and Co.

So it would be high time for these parties to reconsider their position. Maybe they won't. Therefore, voters who live in rented homes or reject a republic dominated by corporations should adjust their voting decision in Berlin on September 20th accordingly. The same applies to voters from liberal, animal-loving and semi-funny small parties. Berlin offers the best chance in a long time to offer an alternative to neoliberalism.