The Berlin Tenants’ Association will not sign the agreements from the Alliance for New Housing and Affordable Housing this Monday. This was announced by the association’s managing director, Reiner Wild, in a press release.

At the end of months of negotiations, it was “realized that what the tenants in Berlin saw was not enough for them to sign an agreement, for the few advantages of which the tenants’ association would then be held responsible,” explained Wild.

The policy of the housing industry in the alliance was very accommodating. In addition, the agreement is “very non-binding”. “The Berlin state government is lagging behind its coalition agreement in various areas with the alliance agreement,” Wild continued. No agreements had been made “that are enforceable or binding for the individual tenants”.

Background: At the beginning of the negotiations, even urban development senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) considered it possible for the housing industry to refrain from raising rents for a certain period of time. There was only a limit on rent increases for households with low incomes and a right to a housing entitlement certificate if the increase caused the housing costs to exceed 30 percent of the income.

The Berlin Alliance for New Housing and Affordable Housing will present the results of the negotiations over the past few months on Monday afternoon in the Rotes Rathaus. The aim of the agreed measures is to significantly accelerate housing construction in the capital in view of the housing shortage and to slow down further rent increases. The participants in the alliance round include representatives from politics, the housing industry and associations.

The umbrella organization for the real estate industry, ZIA, will also not join the Berlin housing alliance. The “Central Real Estate Committee” justifies this with the regulation that Berlin’s Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) described as the most important achievement for tenants: the limitation of rent increases to 30 percent of disposable income. The industry had already negotiated away this general regulation and only limited it to households with low incomes and a claim to a residence entitlement certificate. “The upper limit of 30 percent of the household income for rent is “unrealistic anyway,” says ZIA Managing Director Oliver Wittke. The association had offered to sign the declaration on the alliance with the reservation of “three serious objections” in a protocol declaration. This the Senate rejected.

The industry also rejects the obligation for landlords to allocate 30 percent of the apartments to households with a WBS claim when they are re-let. The conditions of Berlin’s cooperative building land development, which provides for every second newly built apartment to be awarded to households with low or medium incomes, also failed in the real estate industry.

The state association of the private housing association BFW will join the alliance. “The increase in personnel in the authorities, the digitization and acceleration of planning and approval procedures are important first building blocks. The Senate and districts have agreed to put the previously stagnant processes in the new building together with the alliance partners to the test and improve them in a working group “Said the BFW chairman in Berlin, Christopher Weiß. Achieving these goals is “in the hands of the State of Berlin”.

From the point of view of the “Deutsche Wohnen

The initiative “Deutsche Wohnen

There was a majority in favor of a motion calling for a law to be drawn up as quickly as possible to implement the socialization of large housing companies following a positive vote by the expert commission set up by the Senate.