Appeal to Seehofer’s and Merkel’s housing summit #Wohngipfel
United against the rent madness #Mietenwahnsinn
For a policy that provides living space for everybody.
Germany has a housing crisis.
Especially in the cities the prices of land, real-estate and housing are skyrocketing into madly spheres. As a result, speculation is thriving and real-estate holdings are growing fast.
While thousands of people live in fear of losing their apartments because of increasing rents and eviction notices or not finding a suitable apartment, few people have increasing profits. More and more income is spent on the rent. Wage increases are eaten up. In many places, housing has become a poverty risk factor. Homelessness is increasing.
A lot of times, social organizations have to send away people in need. Discrimination and sometimes even open racism make the search for an apartment more difficult. At the same time, week by week the housing market loses thousands of affordable apartments to rent increases, apartment changes, modernizations and evictions.
Market and state have failed. At least 1 million newly-built low-priced apartments are needed. In spite of the huge demand, the market does not provide for affordable construction of new apartments. Instead pseudo-luxury housing is built and offered at exorbitant prices. Most of the time, politics does not take these problems seriously and has made them worse by privatizing public estate and housing companies. Speculation is unleashed. Measures against the increase of prices of land, construction and real-estate are in short supply. It is even worse: Instead of protecting tenants and people searching for apartments, the Federal government refuses to pass necessary improvements of the tenancy law.
United for a different housing policy.
In spite of that, more and more people are defending themselves against being driven out. They set up house communities and fight for their neighborhood. By now it has become clear that a housing control for the common good does work, whether it is in energy-related building modernization or construction of new low-cost buildings. It is politics only that refuses to provide the required framework.ein.
Längst ist klar, dass auch gemeinwohlorientierte Wohnraumbewirtschaftung funktioniert, sei es bei der energetischen Gebäudemodernisierung oder preisgünstigem Neubau. Allein die Politik verwehrt den notwendigen Rahmen.
We are tired of this rent madness #Mietenwahnsinn!
A broad alliance of initiatives and organizations calls for an overdue change in rent and housing politics:
- Tighten up the rental price brake law, fine infractions, lower regular rent increases drastically!
- Limit the distribution of costs after modernization to 4% of the construction costs and cut it off at 1,50 €/m² per month within 8 years!
- Energy-related measures should not affect the total rent including utilities.
- Stop forced evictions! Improve the protection against unwarranted eviction!
- Extend social and low-cost construction of new housing at a large scale and introduce permanent commitments! Provide yearly subsidies for at least 100.000 affordable apartments! Apply the planning law for the common good!
- Regulate land prices and land use, do not sell public property to the highest bidder!
- Strengthen property owners who act for the common good and introduce a new housing policy serving the public good.
- Fight the proprietors’ lobby, establish transparency in real-estate.
- Sanction discrimination, create more accessible housing, prevent homelessness!
- Adjust housing costs and rent subsidy yearly and based on reality!
Living is a human right – No ground for speculation!
Join the ›Alternative Housing Summit‹ on 20 Sept. 2018 and/or Friday, 21 Sept. 2018 in the ›Protest at the Chancellery‹.
You are invited by:
