As we previously reported at The Real News, voters in Berlin were recently faced with a game-changing referendum to expropriate housing held by giant corporate landlords who have made the city increasingly unaffordable for most residents. The passing of the referendum, and the organizing that made it possible, was not only a shock but a source of hope for many around the world who have seen options for affordable housing gobbled up by vampire capitalists and large companies contributing to the runaway financialization of the housing market. How were Berliners able to take on these big landlords and pass this historic referendum? What happens now? And can Berlin provide a model for those fighting for housing justice around the world?
In this segment of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with longtime TRNN contributor Molly Shah and Berlin-based activist Ian Clotworthy about the recent referendum and the great global housing struggle to come. Ian Clotworthy is from Ireland and has lived in Berlin for about 10 years; he is active in DW Enteignen (where he represents the Right2TheCity group), DSA Berlin, and the Green New Deal for Europe. Molly Shah is a freelance writer and social media consultant based in Berlin, and she’s a regular contributor to The Real News. Prior to moving to Germany, Molly was an activist, teacher, and lawyer in Louisville, Kentucky.
Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.
Pre-Production/Studio/Post Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript
Marc Steiner: Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us once again. As many of us know, Germany has just had an election. On Sept. 26, most of the world was focused on Angela Merkel stepping down and the battle to replace her. Many people saw her as an icon of leadership. That’s a political discussion we will not get into today, but her party lost, and all that happened. But, one of the most important reverberations of all this that affects not only Germany and the EU, but people struggling for housing across the globe, took place in Berlin, in a referendum, where the majority of Berliners said that it would be okay to expropriate housing from landlords who own over 3000 dwelling units.
Now, this is a city that has 80% of the people are renters, and rents have skyrocketed. Something that all of us listening to this podcast know in the places we live in. Whether you’re listening to us in Europe, or Latin America, or United States, or Canada, it’s the same. Now though, still will be a struggle for this implementation. The battle hasn’t ended, but it was a phenomenal vote. It meant a lot politically, and we’re going to talk to two folks joining us from Berlin at this moment. We’re going to talk about what that means, and we’ll look at the larger consequences of this vote. We’re joined by Molly Shaw, who, as you know, is a regular contributor here at Real News, a freelance writer and social media consultant who lives in Berlin. Before she went to Germany, she was an activist, teacher, and lawyer in Louisville, Kentucky.
We’re also joined by Ian Clotworthy, who is originally from Ireland. The question is, is anybody from Berlin from Germany? That’s a good question, but he’s been there for the last 10 years, and he’s now taking part in political activism. He studies computational linguistics, he’s active in EW and Titan, and DSA Berlin, and Green New Deal for Europe. Ian, welcome, good to have you with this. I’m glad you both could join us today. And so, let’s just begin with a little background here. You both wrote articles. I read the stuff you wrote, Molly, before the vote took place. Just give us a sense of what happened in Berlin with this vote. What led up to it, and the battle that you covered and saw.
Molly Shaw: Sure. Berlin has had a decades-long struggle regarding raising rent prices. How this came to a head and ended up being a referendum, though, is based in the Rent Cap Law that was overturned by the German Supreme Court in April. It was a law that was immensely helpful for Berliners, that capped rent. I think it was 90% of the city housing stock was affected, and it was overturned because of the FDP and the CDU politicians, basically, and a coalition of businesses led by Deutsche Wohnen, who took it to the Supreme Court. The German Supreme Court overturned the Berlin Rent Cap Law, which was the impetus to put this referendum – Ian, can correct me, if I’m incorrect – to get it on the ballot, so it ended up on the ballot relatively quickly.
They collected a massive amount of signatures, went door-to-door, It was a huge organizing project, as you can imagine, especially in a pandemic. When I wrote the article, the last poll I could find had a 47% to 43%, the poll I found, and I was like, well, that sounds like it might pass, but it had to hit a 20% barrier, and there were some questions as to whether or not it would do that. And then, it ended up on election night just overwhelmingly passing at 56% to 39%, I think, are the final numbers. It’s a referendum that if you have more than 3000 units, which affects primarily really large landlords, clearly. Deutsche Wohnen would be the biggest one, which was just bought two days ago by the Vonovia. Now, they own something like 180,000 units. I think that’s right.
Marc Steiner: In Germany or Berlin? In Germany?
Molly Shaw: In Berlin.
Marc Steiner: In Berlin? Wow.
Molly Shaw: Yeah. They own something like 500,000 units all over Europe. Mostly in Germany, but also in Sweden and Austria, and other places in Europe. It’s the largest real estate company in Europe, and now it’s even larger, but the referendum is for public control and to expropriate any of those units. It’s sort of amazing. I was a housing attorney before I moved to Berlin, and it’s been really inspiring to watch tenants get a win.
Marc Steiner: Take it home to Louisville.
Molly Shaw: Yeah. They could use it.
Marc Steiner: Yes, I’m sure they could. Ian, also pick up on the activism here and your perspective on this. When I looked at the election results, the left did pretty well in Berlin. This particular vote it seems, from what I’ve been reading, had to do with really hardcore organizing, so talk about all that.
Ian Clotworthy: I am afraid I must correct Molly. The rent cap wasn’t the impetus for this campaign; this campaign was the impetus for the rent cap. This campaign started in early 2018. They might have a few years of organizing the tenants in the housing states owned by Deutsche Wohnen. It seemed very radical, at the time, to reverse the disastrous privatization of the housing, which is something that there’s a pretty broad consensus about in Berlin. That the mass privatization of housing around the year 2000 was a mistake. This demand was radical back in 2018, to forcibly buy back the housing from these companies and completely shut them out of Berlin. [And, at that,] paid considerably under market price, which the constitution here allows for. So then, this demand was taken up by Die Linke, the left-wing party, as well. And then, the SPD, which is the larger more center left-party, who have essentially run Berlin for the entire time, since World War II.
The SPD said, okay. We definitely don’t support this. We will come up with something ourselves. The thing they came up with was the rent cap, which froze the rents for five years for all buildings, except those which were built since 2014, so that’s more than 90% of buildings. I mean, [they switched] a third of contracts that actually actively sunk the rent, because it was considered too high. So, it was watching the Overton window go left in real time, as this policy would have been unthinkable for the SPD five years before. Now, because we shifted the narrative talking about forcibly expropriating these companies, then suddenly capping the rent and forcing landlords to reduce the rent, but not taking the apartments away from them, that seemed like the less radical option. It was palatable for the SPD and for society.
But then, obviously, the large landlords, and the conservative parties, weren’t happy about that, so they launched a legal action in Germany’s Constitutional Court. The court ruled that this kind of law could only be implemented at a federal level, not a state level, and that’s why it was struck down. But one consequence of that law being struck down was that more and more people saw that there’s no real alternative to what we want to do, to socialize the housing. A long-term solution to Berlin’s housing crisis requires changing the ownership relations and the power relations, not just changing the prices and changing some regulations. We’re already in a highly regulated environment.
Molly Shaw: I was really struck by how well done the organizing here was, and how many people it reached. Personally, I enjoyed the ads. They were very well done. Everything was very well organized.
Ian Clotworthy: I guess, for the listeners, we should explain what Deutsche Wohnen is. It’s the name of this stock market listed housing corporation. German Living essentially restarted as a subsidiary of the well-known Deutsche bank, and it was essentially founded in order to own and administer these mass privatized houses in Berlin. When I speak of houses, I’m mostly talking about apartment blocks of five, six stories. Often, in many cases, more as well. Up to 20 stories. Okay, so what Deutsche Wohnen is? It’s this big corporation that owns, call it, a 116,000 apartments in Berlin, so it’s by far the biggest owner. The next one is Vonovia, which Molly mentioned. About 45,000 or thereabouts apartments in Berlin, but their main portfolio is in other parts of Germany. They also come into, or demand to, take the housing stock of these companies, which own more than 3000 apartments. We’re talking about profit-oriented companies, and bring them into public ownership, so Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia. There’s about 10 other companies, which also own more than 3000.
Marc Steiner: I mean, the vote here, to me, seems pretty important in terms of what it means for the future. Clearly, from what I’ve been reading, this is not the end of this struggle inside of Germany and Berlin. I mean, it’s got to go back to the courts. The SPD, who won the last election, has said they were opposed to this from the beginning, and now they’re being pushed, I think, to say they’ll have to reconsider it and think of what this means in terms of their policies going forward. The issue of rents in Germany, from what I’ve talked to a couple of friends in Hamburg and other places, is not so different.
I mean, it’s a nationwide problem when it comes to the cost of housing in Germany, just like it’s a nationwide problem in the United States and in Britain, and so many other places. I wonder what you would both say about what this means to have this vote that says we can expropriate large landlords’s property and make it public housing, control the rents. That changes the whole dynamic of the city, and also sets up a lot of class battles that wouldn’t ordinarily have taken place. Molly, let me turn to you first, and please, jump in after this, Ian. It seems, to me, this is just the beginning of a huge political explosion.
Molly Shaw: I hope so.
Marc Steiner: [laughs] I hope so, too.
Molly Shaw: It’s an amazing way to attack these kind of things, because when Ian was speaking about all the reform efforts that have been launched by other cities… If you look in the United States, which is where I’m most familiar with housing policy, you’ve got all of these Section Eight and all of these various things that are dealt for a fair… They’ll have affordable housing trusts, or all these different things that cities do, that are really neo-liberal solutions to a housing problem. To me, what Berlin is doing is, we should have social housing, because housing is a fundamental right and it shouldn’t be controlled by these ginormous organizations.
When you look at what they were even doing, the audacity of them, even during this huge campaign, they’re merging to be even bigger. They’re actively doing this. Knowing they got all this pushback on the rent cap being overturned, they’re still doing this. I feel it’s really inspiring to look and see we don’t have to take these small like, begging for affordable housing tax credits if you have three children, and like, live in this specific gentrified area, or whatever. I think what Berlin shows is you can ask for these huge changes and get them. [Sorry].
Marc Steiner: And looking at what the response has been from the other side. We’ll go back to the courts, and it will be a battle internally, politically, Ian, as well. I mean, this is, both judicially and in terms of politics, a huge struggle ahead of you. I mean, the referendum was won; it doesn’t mean it’s going to be implemented.
Ian Clotworthy: Yeah. We’re well aware of that. The problem is that, at this time, it’s looking like it’s going to be a continuation of the previous state government, which is the SPD, Greens, and De Linke, in this order of size. The mayor this time is going to be different. It’s going to be a Franziska Giffey, and she is, let’s say, somewhat to the right of the previous mayor. During the election campaign, she declared socialization of housing to be a red line that she would refuse to cross. That was widely received with a lot of consternation, and understood to be an indication of preference for not continuing with the current coalition.
Instead, going into a coalition with the conservative CDU party. But now, ever since we had a decisive referendum victory, she has changed her tune a bit and is talking about, oh, yeah. We’ll respect it. Let’s see what we’ll do to maybe implement it. Although, her style is to always remain as vague as possible, but among the valid votes, we have 59.1% yes. That’s what I mean by a decisive victory. We got over a million votes, far more than any other referendum ever got before here.
Marc Steiner: The final vote was 59.1%, in Berlin, for this referendum?
Ian Clotworthy: Yeah.
Molly Shaw: I think she ended up with only like 26% of the votes, so she has a much harder road to hoe, to say that she’s going to be the person to stop something that’s got 59%.
Marc Steiner: Molly, what do you think that means in terms of what happens next? I mean, the world is a complex place, but when you’ve got close to 60% of people saying, we want to stop these large landlords from gentrifying our city, and destroying our city, and paying these high rents. Make housing a right. You’ve got this broad left-wing coalition in charge of Berlin. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the rest of Germany, because, probably, the left will not join the SPD, and the Greens, and the new government. Looks like the right wing parties will be joining the government. What does that set up, do you think? How does this fit into the heart of the struggle inside of Germany?
Molly Shaw: It’s an interesting time to see how it will happen. Ian might be better to speak on this. Certainly, the left struggled in the federal elections, and also in the Berlin elections as well. But, I think when you look at a policy being incredibly popular, it’s hard to deny that this was an incredibly popular referendum that got support from a wide variety of… The city’s neighborhoods supported it. I think it would be very difficult for, especially, a left-leaning, which I use air quotation marks for some of that, because whether or not the SPD under Franziska Giffey is left-leaning is maybe an open question. But, whether or not they’re going to implement it? I mean, to me, when you have that large of a percentage, it would be very difficult to back away from it. But I guess we’ll see.
Marc Steiner: Ian, what do you want to add to that?
Ian Clotworthy: Right now, I’m stuck with Berlin Level for the moment. We’re facing with what looks like, parties which are going to agree, SPD and Greens, which are probably going to remain as non-committal for as long as possible on this. But, we have a very big, very active movement. We’ve built that up. We worked really hard to build it up over the last few years, and this is not going away. Any politician who refuses to do their best to implement this referendum will have to answer for it. In any public events they do, we can be there and ask, why you aren’t doing this? It’s your job.
I’d add further, this movement allows us to have the capacity to keep this demand alive, keep up the pressure, and even maintain the narrative lead and the process lead towards fulfilling our demand, which was for the state government to write and implement a law that would bring housing stocks, large ones, into public ownership. Not just interject the typical public ownership, but to found a new institution, which would enable the democratic management of the housing.
Marc Steiner: That would be significant. I mean, if that happened. I mean, it changes the dynamic. I think partially, for me, what’s really interesting here as well, as we close out, is that this is, as I said earlier in our conversation… I think if this really unfolds the way it could unfold, it’s inspirational for the rest of the world in terms of that struggle. Because you’re seeing the whole idea that before the unification of Berlin, clearly these landlords didn’t exist in what was East Berlin, and the laws they passed since the forties have changed that dynamic. But, this could really be a pushback that people didn’t expect. People could wake up in cities across Europe and across the developed world, going, no. We have to take the power in our hands. This vote, to me, goes beyond Berlin.
Ian Clotworthy: Oh, yeah. For sure. It’s a massive impact on the rest of Germany, especially because the legal strategy of this campaign was these tenant organizers back in 2015. They found this little known article in the Grundgesetz, that is Germany’s federal constitution, which explicitly permits for the socialization of private property if the private property is not serving the public good, or is harming the public good. Most countries don’t have that, because this is a constitution written, pretty much, at the height of the social democratic era of European politics. This is something that will be a bit harder to replicate in most countries, especially like in the USA, where private property is sacrosanct.
Marc Steiner: [laughs] Sad, but true. Yes.
Ian Clotworthy: I think some of the countries will. I really hope they can be inspired, and we’re really happy to share the knowledge that we have, but it will require some more creativity on their side. But, within Germany, this article, of course, applies everywhere in the country, especially if we really manage to get this through and these big companies are shut out of Berlin. We can create a city with affordable rents for all, as our English-speaking flyer shows. Anyway. Yeah, this could be repeated gradually in other places in Germany, too. I mean, there are also difficulties there, which I won’t get into right now. But yeah, it’s absolutely huge, because this problem is getting worse. It’s not just a new thing for East Berlin. These big landlords, corporate landlords, they didn’t exist in the West either. Ever since housing became such a hot thing to invest in, because the return on most of the things that you invest in became relatively much lower, like [inaudible]. 20 years ago, you saw this absolute wall of money hitting the housing markets and shutting everyone else out. It’s very much a crisis of very recent times.
Molly Shaw: I think when you talk about this as being a radical action, I think that’s true. But also, what I think is radical is that there are 200,000 units in the past 30 years in Berlin, since reunification, that had been taken from public ownership into private ownership. To me, that’s also something radical that happened that was dramatic and changed people’s lives for the worse, for the most part, and led to some of these increasing rents and just out of control rental market in Berlin. While fighting back certainly is radical, I think when we look at the things that Ian is talking about, like how real estate/venture capitalists have manipulated housing everywhere, in every city of the world. That is super radical, and not how you’re supposed to be living in a society or in a community. It should not be like this, and that has been a radical change as well.
Ian Clotworthy: Yeah, it’s true. It’s not normal. Thinking about it like this has also, I think, convinced many people who are relatively conservative to get on board with this demand as well. We didn’t get almost 60% of the votes just from lefties. Also, a lot of moderate and conservative people voted for this as well, because this is not normal. It shouldn’t be like this.
Marc Steiner: Well, I mean, that’s the power of organizing that goes across lines. When you hit the human heart and mind, organizing goes beyond your ideology and brings people in, which is what you’re supposed to do. That’s what happened in Berlin, and it’s a lesson for us all. We’re going to look forward to following up with you all and seeing where this goes. It’d be interesting to hear this conversation dialogue with housing activists here in this country, and some other places, to see what all this means. That would be a very fascinating conversation to have. I want to thank you both, Molly Shaw and Ian Clotworthy, for being here today. It really was a pleasure to talk to you both, and congratulations on your hard work and organizing, and your win in Berlin. Let’s keep it pushing hard. Thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you all for joining us today, and please let me know what you think about what you’ve heard today, or what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I promise I’ll get right back to you. If you’ve not joined us yet, please go to www.therealnews.com/support. Become a monthly donor and become part of the future with us. For Stephen Frank, and the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
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