Berlin’s Election Can Make Socialized Housing a Reality
It’s been five years since Berliners voted by referendum to expropriate the big corporate landlords. The ruling parties blocked the move, but next month’s state elections could produce a left-wing government that can finally honor the vote.
In 2021, Berliners voted to nationalize the big corporate landlords’ housing stock. The ruling parties refused to implement the decision; yet ahead of September’s Berlin election, the issue is pushing socialist party Die Linke to the top of the polls. (Carsten Koall / picture alliance via Getty Images)
On September 20, Berliners will elect a new state parliament in a contest that has already become a referendum on a referendum.
Five years ago, 59.1 percent of the city voted to socialize the holdings of Berlin’s largest for-profit landlords. Following a long campaign to force a vote, the referendum gave a nonbinding but overwhelming mandate to take the city’s housing back under public control. Yet the governing parties never delivered. Now the question of whether that vote will ever be honored is again the defining issue of a Berlin election.
There is indeed hope that it will be honored, because one serious contender in this race is democratic socialist party Die Linke, which is running on a detailed bill that would automatically expropriate any housing company holding more than three thousand apartments in the city, converting roughly 240,000 to 260,000 units into public ownership. It is, in other words, promising to actually do what Berliners already told their government to do in 2021.
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