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

72 points · 152 comments · theanonymousone

  1. soonnow · · focus · HN ↗
    To add a b it of context. They do not want to confiscate housing. They do want to pay landlords, though below current (very high) rates. Also this would only apply to private real-estate companies not individual owners.

    And they can't govern alone, so I think it's unlikely that this plan is actually implemented as originally planned. The likely coalition would contain 3 parties.

    1. aurareturn · · focus · HN ↗

        They do want to pay landlords, though below current (very high) rates.
      
      In San Francisco, NIMBYs secretly support laws like this. This basically guarantees that many builders will do the math and conclude that it doesn't make sense to build housing in San Francisco.

      New large condo buildings have to sell 30% of the units at below market rate. This causes many viable projects to never get built.

      So laws like this are sold to renter voters as a way to lower housing costs, but NIMBYs secretly love it. Over time, renters pay more in rent because there is less supply due to builders not building. However, a lucky few renters who were here early will get below market rents.

      Perfect examples of voters voting for a short term fix but pay more in long term. And voting for themselves while screwing future renters.

      1. vrganj · · focus · HN ↗
        The fix is for the city to be the builder, like it is in Vienna.

        The City of Vienna is the largest landlord in Europe. It is also the only major European capital without a rent cost crisis.

        1. fileeditview · · focus · HN ↗
          You would think that people could learn from examples. Sadly it rarely happens.
          1. spwa4 · · focus · HN ↗
            The example here being that they would pay a lot more city tax, never own a home, and over a period of decades this would make rent prices go down.

            If this is what people want, then it seems like the right solution. Short term the only change will be increased taxes and maybe a few lucky renters getting apartments with the number slowly increasing over years and years.

            Which is pretty much the situation in Vienna (rents are low in Vienna, but for the 20% that get city-owned apartments the rents are very low. Quality is ... let's call it "very old", and there's no choice (can't move up if you have a kid, say). Then housing associations pay like 30% more but less than private. Private rents are about double city-owned apartments as they're called. Only way to become a city renter is to earn less than 58000 in a given year, then wait 5+ years).

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