Friday, June 25, 2021

Petition Story

 I've essayed a bit over the affordable housing issue in Germany, over the past couple of years.  

Another development came up this week.  A petition is going around Berlin....currently at 343k signatures (7-percent of the public there) to 'expropriate the commercial housing ownership, and put the residences/buildings back under the city (recreating public housing authority)'.

By city regulations.....they needed 175k signatures....so they passed that level.  But at the same time, with some review....there's a suggestion that one-third of signatures are from non-Germans....so they won't count.  

Next?  Some judge will review all of this and either accept the legit signatures or throw this out.

If it comes to a vote?  Well...it creates a massive mess.

If you use the law for expropriation, you have to compensate the losing owner.  The often discussed amount required?  18 billion Euro (21 billion dollars)., if you went for all houses meeting this condition.

Where the money resides?  That's an amusing question....the city doesn't have this type of money just laying around.

Also, once you borrow the money.....the reduced rent payments wouldn't give you the capital to pay for renovations or pay off the loan.

Chaos coming?  More or less.  

People walking around and thinking that they can expropriate property and not compensate the owner?  Yeah......there's a lot of that behavior being shown.


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