The bright yellow signs of Berlin’s Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen housing movement are visible everywhere across Berlin — and their impact is felt far beyond the capital. Business, political, and media circles throughout the German-speaking countries have begun to fear that a successful initiative to “expropriate Deutsche Wohnen” — one of the city’s biggest housing companies — along with other major landlords will usher in a new era of socialism in Berlin.

The real estate sector’s fears are not entirely unfounded. Indeed, for over a century, German socialists have sought to grant all human beings a dignified existence by democratically administrating and distributing housing and residential property. The push for a political intervention in Berlin’s housing market is part of a long history of movements that help us think about what a socialist response to the housing question might look like today.