I sat last night watching ARD (public TV) and a news segment on a housing 'crisis'.
So....the basic story....the German Tenants' Association got onto the housing market crisis.
In their mind....Germany is around 1.4 million apartments/homes 'short'. So this problem leads to a welfare state problem. To fix it? They want the German federal gov't to build more units, and have some type of rent-brakes.
I've sat and reviewed over the past decade. It's an odd problem.
Germany (in the old West Germany days....before 1990)....had a fair amount of city/state-owned apartment buildings.....with set rents. In the 1980s....the city governments got a bit worried....most of the units were reaching 30-to-50 years old and required renovation. None of them were making enough to clearly cover the cost of renovation.
The federal response? They'd sell the units/buildings to a commercial company....use profits to cover some renovation and get out of city-run social housing.
What they didn't really expect.....the commercial operations did renovate housing....but came up to charge a fair amount of increase on rent. In some cases....it pushed renters out of highly urbanized regions (Bremen, Frankfurt, Munich and so-on).
What these associations want.....is a re-creation of social housing, and limited rents....meaning the income level for the city/state....would not be enough to cover renovation in 20-to-30 years.
Added to this 'burden'....it is apparent that plenty of housing exists....if you consider all of the country, but in the urbanized zone (the cities of 200k or more)....the draw of public interest to live there....instead of the rural areas....is another issue by itself.
It is a problem....but the solutions simply lay a path for bigger problems.
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