Rent control still rocks. Just ask the people looking for a place to live in Hamburg, for instance.

The German government’s Mietpriesbremse (rent control plan)  – it’s “sozial,” as in “for free”  –  has alarmed landlords who are now raising rents even higher than they already had been, “vorsorglich” (preventitively).  Imagine that. Bad landlords.

It’s always the same old thing. There is a shortage of apartments. This increases the rents. New apartments are needed. That is why the government steps in “to help” by imposing price controls called rent controls. That is, the government ensures that the shortage will remain by making new housing construction unprofitable for those who would otherwise build the new housing (I know, profit is a dirty-ugly-yucky word but we haven’t found a better one yet). The shortage is sustained and increased by rent control, the supposed solution.

But don’t worry. Elections will come around soon enough and the same politicians who fixed that first problem will have new proposals for fixing the one that followed, all inexplicably like. And they will get reelected – by the very same people they screwed in the first place. Now that’s what I call sozial.

“Durch die Ankündigungen ohne konsequente Umsetzung hat die große Koalition die Kosten immer wieder angeheizt.”