Just recently, Bloomberg Businessweek published an article titled “No City Hates Its Landlords Like Berlin Does.” “Hate” is a strong word, and such an exaggerated title does not reveal the whole truth of the housing crisis in the German capital — or of the protest against it. However, one thing certainly is true: only a few cities in the world demonstrate such a lively resistance to big real estate.

For years, activist groups have rallied against gentrification, while self-organized tenant groups and civil alliances have advocated for the “right to the city.” Together, they constitute a broad movement against the “rent madness” (Mietenwahnsinn) of soaring prices. In 2015, the movement successfully organized a public referendum on the housing supply and ensured that the freshly elected Red-Red-Green government — a coalition of Social Democrats, Green,s and the Left Party — took up its demands only one year later.

But that wasn’t enough for campaigners. Since 2018, the movement has called for the expropriation and taking back into municipal ownership of real estate owned by big companies with more than 3,000 flats. Here, activists invoked the German federal law — which allows for expropriation (in this case, a compulsory sale, with compensation) in special cases — as well as the Berlin constitution, which states that every human has a right to appropriate living space.