As usual, everything Berlin’s “red-red-green” city government touches turns to Scheiße. As usual, the media clones pretends that this is somehow news.
Berlin’s Rent Controls Are Proving to Be a Disaster – A year ago, the leftist government of Germany’s capital region imposed central planning on the city’s housing market. That was a bad move.
A year ago, a rent cap took effect in the city that was unprecedented in Germany. For all apartments built before 2014, rents were frozen at whatever they were on Jun. 18, 2019. Tenants in those units can also force landlords to lower rents defined as “excessive…”
These data confirm what economists had warned about — and what’s been observed in other cities that dabbled in rent controls, such as San Francisco or Cambridge, Massachusetts. The caps represent a windfall to one group of tenants: those, whether rich or poor, who are already ensconced in regulated apartments. Simultaneously, they hurt all other groups — especially young people and those coming from other cities — by all but shutting them out of the market.
