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Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing

72 points · 152 comments · theanonymousone

  1. throwawaydeutsc · · focus · HN ↗
    I used to live in South America (mid-tier city), living here in Berlin my will never understand how such intelligent people in general (no irony or sarcasm) never thought in a collective sense that if you have a market with a rigid supply in terms of availability (not occupied homes with no incentives for renting), it never made a serious planning for building.

    I was travelling to some big cities (between 70% of size of Berlin to 4x its size) and you can find a plethora of options since something modest that can fit in a minimal income (salario minimo) to nice appartments.

    Here we had in the last 7 years 55K units made, but in my home city alone we had more than 470K in a single city; if you're willing to be 1 hour away by car you can find apartments that the normal berliner never would have access in his/her entire life.

    Not to dunk on berliners, but once you're in the environment where people do real housing at scale you will see a small magic in terms of prices for the legacy supply dropping.

    1. tirant · · focus · HN ↗
      Unfortunately solving the housing crisis will remove any incentive to vote for the Left or the Socialist Party.

      Remember the first incentive of any politician is to remain in power not to solve citizens problems. Sometimes there’s overlapping, fortunately.

      1. tpm · · focus · HN ↗
        Why didn't CDU "solve the housing crisis"?
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