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> After tenant outcry, the city also saved at least two apartment blocks in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg from being sold, using a legal tool known as the “right of

> After tenant outcry, the city also saved at least two apartment blocks in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg from being sold, using a legal tool known as the “right of first refusal,” which lets officials intervene if they can find funding for the purchase. In another case, the city recently stepped in and purchased a large disused freight station in the eastern district of Köpenick, which it plans to convert into affordable housing. People like me, living in cities like Munich, Frankfurt or Hamburg, whose rents are much higher than Berlin's and whose taxes fund this, are always happy to help you, Berlin. Just tell us, when your airport is finished, (maybe in 10-20 years?) so we can take a look at what we paid for over there. Berlin is complaining at very high level. If you want to talk about gentrification in Germany, Munich and Frankfurt are the cities to talk about. Berlin has a much easier situation, with much more open space. But when a developer comes along and wants to build skyscrapers on abandoned land, they also complain, because they want to keep their open spaces. The people over there complain about the Swabians, who want to live in these apartments, all that while being financed by the taxes of said people from Southern Germany. I am all for liberal cities and unique culture, but Berlin does not seem to realize, that this is made possible, because Frankfurt, the exact opposite of Berlin, pays for it.

izacus 10y ago
And all the money and jobs you have there in Frankfurt and Munch is because rest of us in EU pay for it by buying cars and other crap. This kind of finger pointing is utterly counter-productive. Without Berlin and rest of europe "your" city is a poor dead starving wasteland and we don't go around debating whether Frankfurt can enact a policy because Polish farmers are feeding them are we? What you're doing is essentially trying to move the conversation away from what Berliners think is important - keeping their quality of life.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  > And all the money and jobs you have there in Frankfurt and Munch is because rest of us in EU pay for it by buying cars and other crap. Your are welcome to build better cars. Tesla for example is trying to do it, lets see how we respond to that. This is the point of a market-based economy. It is not like we force them to buy stuff. > Without Berlin and rest of europe "your" city is a poor dead starving wasteland. These cities did well, when half of Berlin and most of todays Europe was behind a wall, so I think you are wrong here. > What you're doing is essentially trying to move the conversation away from what Berliners think is important - keeping their quality of life. They can keep there quality of live, I am just asking for a balanced budget. We are happy to pay our share for the additional expenses Berlin has, for being our capital, but other than that, please finance yourself.
  - izacus 10y ago
    > Your are welcome to build better cars. Tesla for example is trying to do it, lets see how we respond to that. This is the point of a market-based economy. It is not like we force them to buy stuff. You're missing the point. Your own city leaders and government lobbies to sell more of that stuff. Without that you wouldn't be able to "finance yourself" - and that's my point. In your arrogance you're forgetting that subsidies are made to keep other germans and europeans buying your crap so you can "finance yourself". > They can keep there quality of live, I am just asking for a balanced budget. We are happy to pay our share for the additional expenses Berlin has, for being our capital, but other than that, please finance yourself. The whole point of existence of a nation-state is that it can improve overall quality of life and security because it redirects and pools financing around and creates environment on which your Frankfurt can "finance itself". Again, without those people that "can't finance themselves", you have little economy and customers to run your market-based economy to finance yourself.
    - allendoerfer 10y ago
      > The whole point of existence of a nation-state is that it can improve overall quality of life and security because it redirects and pools financing around and creates environment on which your Frankfurt can "finance itself". Again, without those people that "can't finance themselves", you have little economy and customers to run your market-based economy to finance yourself. I think you are just plain wrong here. Frankfurt would do just fine without Berlin. Your points would make sense for the state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is the main source of income, while others have negative budget. But there the relationship you described, is indeed true: People are commuting to Frankfurt, that is why all the taxes are getting paid there. If not for the rural parts of Hesse, Frankfurt would look different. Berlin on the other hand does not really benefit Frankfurt at all, from a tax point of view. In the contrary: If Berlin wasn't there, maybe Frankfurt would be the capital of Germany. Germany is a nation-state, but also a federal nation-state. The whole point of federalism is, that each entity can decide, what quality of live means for them and what they want to do culturally. It also means, that these entities are responsible for collecting their own taxes and paying for their stuff. Thankfully, German states are soon constitutionally mandated to have a balanced budget, so this will end.
eveningcoffee 10y ago
And who can you blame for your higher rent? Berliners?
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  I would blame biology. People want to live in cities, I moved into a city myself. Economically, this is just a fact, you cannot really complain about. You have to build housing to handle the stream of new people and try to avoid empty apartments. In my city, buildings are being build, sure it can always be faster, but there are already whole new districts being build from scratch.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    Berlin doesn't actually need this, in their defense. Sure, skyscrapers are nice, but Berlin has a lot of abandoned buildings they can reach for first. But, goddamn it, building new low-rise buildings... That shit just annoys me.
    - CydeWeys 10y ago
      It pisses me off whenever I'm walking around Manhattan and I see new buildings going up that are only a few floors tall. It's such a poor use of limited space. And yet there are zoning regulations that limit vast swaths of even Manhattan to low heights (often lower than many of the existing structures that were built awhile ago). Check out this PDF of East Village as an example: http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoning-maps/map12c.pdf http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoni... All of those R7* and R8B zones only allow floor area ratios of 3-4, meaning that if a building takes up the entire lot, which is common, it is limited to those numbers of floors.
germanier 10y ago
I'm not sure why people always bring up the tax redistribution. We speak about small volumes. It's about 10 billion from the states plus 10 billion from the federal government. Berlin get's roughly a third of that. We are talking about a few percent of the states' budgets. The amount of money changing hands is by no means enough to pay for major developments let alone an airport. It's certainly less than the (hard to quantify) advantage of having the market of 12 out of 16 states receiving money in your nation. I don't see a feasible way of changing Berlin's economic situation drastically, given it's a landlocked city state in a unique historical situation. Berlin will for the foreseeable future always be on the receiving end of redistribution.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  I brought it up, because to me, the state buying back the houses, was marketed as the solution in this article. You could also articulate the numbers differently: Every Berliner gets ~2000€ per year from Southern Germany (based on your numbers, did not check it). > I don't see a feasible way of changing Berlin's economic situation drastically, given it's a landlocked city state in a unique historical situation. Berlin has fast access to rich Northern Europe by plane, cheap, but people rich, Eastern Europe by car, huge open spaces for development, the advantage of being culturally very rich, already quite international, being known internationally and being financed by other states. And inspite of this article: It also still has cheap rents. Berlin also has a tech scene, which is very much hyped, but in reality tiny compared to SV. Maybe we could try to make this something, which actually creates some bigger companies. I give you, that around Berlin there is basically a green desert, but Berlin itself has a certain size and is growing. How much more advantages could a city possibly have?
  - iheartmemcache 10y ago
    Mmm, in every nation-state there is going to be some economic redistribution. For example, I pay two state taxes (NY and MA). Both of these states contribute far more to the federal government than they retrieve in services rendered. Compare that to a state like Alabama, sure it looks like I'm getting mucked over. From an economic POV, I should be outraged that I'm continuously paying money for services that states that consistently run significant net-negatives (e.g. Alabama). I'm fine with that[1] - it's a component of the nation-state, and it provides allows states like Alabama can to keep their highways operational and their schools funded. I accept this as being a member of a modern nation-state so that my fellow countrymen with less opportunities can have a shot at a better life. There are some institutions like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that take tax dollars so I can watch the PBS Newshour, even though it doesn't generate revenue. I am a-okay with the National Endowment of Arts because it produces 'culture', which we'd both agree creates value, despite us not being able to put that numerical value into a spreadsheet. I'm not a German national but I spent a few months in Berlin. It started out as a stint for CCC (back when it was in Berlin not Munich) and I extended my stay because I met some incredible locals. I'm quite fortunate to have traveled extensively enough for work and pleasure to be jaded. You travel enough and you end up meeting the same types of people doing the same things with minor (but very extensive and often very subtle, primarily cultural) differences. Some guy you did a 3 week stint for in in Joburg will have the exact same mannerisms as someone Nicaraguan you end up having a chat with at the airport bar waiting for your flight out of JFK. I say all this as a preface to establish this: I'm not really very much impressed by the novelty of this city versus that city. However, Berlin is one of the few cities that provided a certain unique je ne sais quoi ('feel'? 'ambiance'?) to it, that I'd imagine must have been similar to being in Vienna during the 1920s for philosophy, Greenwich Village NYC for folk-music in the 1960s, or Silicon Valley during the hay-day of NatSemi. Not just in tech, mind you, but take the local music scene there, absolutely spectacular, as is the broader category of arts. The city just overtakes you if you let it, and makes you want to create. Why do you think the population is increasing? I couldn't say for certain but I'd argue it's because others feel similarly. I'm not sure what ingredients or at which proportions to make that specific cocktail, but I'd argue when you have it, it's worth a few extra greenbacks, pounds or Euro to sustain it. == [1] Other than the large percentage which goes to fund the everlasting 'war on terror' and all of the beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex. Let me ask you, if there's a 'war on terror' or a 'war on drugs', Who do I sue for peace if I want to surrender and start negotiating resolution terms? How do you win a war against a concept?</rant>
sgift 10y ago
One of the reasons there still exists some affordable housing in Munich is that the city builds housing itself and rents it out at affordable prices. While other cities sold their housing in the 90s/2000s - because privatization is king, free market loves you, and so on - Munich didn't do any of that, because we recognized that people which don't earn high wages are needed in a city, too. Housing market is still tough, but without any public housing it would be far worse. Long story short: If Berlin acknowledges that a city cannot exist without affordable housing I'm all for it. There are far worse investments of tax money.
- tannhaeuser 10y ago
  The need for state-financed housing is per definition a failure to leverage natural market forces and points to regulations being the culprit when investment conditions are better than ever at the same time. If the city of Munich has to pay subsidies for public housing, then that's tax payers money being wasted for no reason other than housing and construction laws missing their goal. I may sound like a harsh capitalist, but the money for housing has to be earned somewhere. Right now its being taken from tax payers, when it'd be much better to reduce taxes so people can buy their houses themselves.
  - jpetso 10y ago
    I see this line of reasoning a lot, and find it somewhat bewildering. The people most desperately in need of subsidies are also the people who earn little enough income to pay very low taxes already, or none at all. Reducing taxes doesn't do shit when you don't make enough income in the first place. It's not a recipe for giving people in need better opportunities, just a recipe for people in less need to keep their money. Which is a reasonable (if somewhat selfish) point of view, but don't sell it as a solution that actually helps people who can't afford their housing.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    >"The need for state-financed housing is per definition a failure to leverage natural market forces and points to regulations being the culprit when investment conditions are better than ever at the same time." And what do you call it when a city becomes a place that only the wealthy can afford to live in? There are so many people that contribute and make a city function who are not even remotely middle class. Where do they live? Isn't that also a failure? Real-estate in desirable cities is increasingly being used to stash cash[1][2], and there are no shortage of developers who are developing property specifically to attract these types of "tenants." So no simply relying on "natural market forces"is not really an inclusionary solution. [1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/planners-must-take-back-control-of-london https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/planne... [2]http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-york-real-estate-2014-6/ http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-y...
jojoo 10y ago
I think the question is: How big of a difference in living standard is acceptable in one Country. Go to a public school in berlin, look at the toilets. Chances are very high they might be defect, stink and malfunctioning. I worked as a special eds teacher in Neukölln. We're supposed to train our students how to use the toilet. Half of the time the toilets in the first floor were broken. That means me had to stand in line for restrooms instead of doing some work. When the toilets got repaired after half a year the toilets in the basement broke down. Our students became very good at waiting in line. Now i work in a school in the southwest of germany. If a toilet breaks down, chances are it will be repaired on the same day. If they need an external contractor in will take one day. All of the students live in germany. Yet one get clean, functioning toilets, the others not. (Fun fact: Berlin paid for my education, now Baden-Württenberg gets a university-trained teacher for free...)
- Overtonwindow 10y ago
  I think this is indicative everywhere. Poorer regions have more challenges and get ignored, over wealthier.
- posterboy 10y ago
  Fun fact: They still pay you (I hope). Also, by OP's line of reasoning they paid for the university to begin with. But on the other hand, they are draining the talent. So, give and take.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  I think parts of it can be solved, by centralizing education. In my opinion Berlin (as well as Hamburg and Bremen) really does not need its own Kultusministerium, money saved there can directly be sent to schools. Maybe also the funding for schools could come from federal sources to a higher degree, but I do not know the exact situation. Btw, the state you live in is called Baden-Württemberg.
rndgermandude 10y ago
Your taxes do not fund "this" exactly. It's not like Berlin govt will let people live in those places for free, just at an affordable price point. They can do this because they are not oriented towards maximum profit, unlike private investors. Bundesland Berlin being a landlord in all this might end up effectively slightly subsidizing some of the rents in some more expensive-to-acquire-and-maintain buildings but operate at a slight margin in other cheaper buildings. In the end, if they do it right (and I admit that's a big if) they should be operating close to break-even, probably with a small profit to build some reserves for unexpected future costs. Instead of complaining that Berlin tries to do something (too much) against rent price hikes and gentrification, complain instead that "cities like Munich, Frankfurt or Hamburg" do not do enough to prevent rent price hikes.
- anothercomment 10y ago
  If the government rents out places below market races, it is subsidizing those renters. It is leaving money on the table that it could use to pay for things that it pays for with taxpayer money from Munich instead.
  - posterboy 10y ago
    If the price is equal to the utility cost, then it isn't below market rate, but exactly matching it. The other prices are over market rate.
    - anothercomment 10y ago
      How do you define utility cost - isn't it kind of equivalent to market rate (what it is worth for people to pay)? I can not really make sense of your statement? If the prices are over market rate, how to they find renters?
      - posterboy 10y ago
        Utility cost was the wrong idiom, I meant, like, the overall expenses. Keep in mind the OP before you > ... and that's a big if ... In other words, If the government can operate housing over a long term at break-even, a stabilizing market needs to be converging towards that limit, otherwise they couldn't break even. I was implicitly limiting my remark to the market rate of the expenses, not the income of the operation. The same can be applied to the other side of the equation, the price the inhabitants have to pay. The market can be stable only if both sides match. Of course that's a gross simplification, but so is the term market rate.
lis 10y ago
I would love to see some actual numbers on this, but here is another perspective on this: A) Students educated in Berlin are far more likely to move to other cities, since there are e.g. no jobs in production. How many engineers working at Daimler did study in Berlin (i.e. costing the city money, without contributing by paying taxes)? B) A lot of large companies are currently opening offices in Berlin. They are gladly using the services of the city, as are their well-payed employees, effectively raising the rent. However, they will still pay taxes at their headquarters in a different city. As I said, I have no numbers on this, but the situation is way to complex to just say that Berlin is wasting tax money. It certainly is - in a lot of areas - but so are others states. Instead of being pissed that Berlin is trying to improve the situation and keep the city affordable for everybody, maybe we should start asking how we can achieve the same in other sought after locations as well.
- jojoo 10y ago
  Baden-Württenberg has even a Ad-Campain to recruit teachers from Berlin.
- kjksf 10y ago
  Affordable? Maybe. For everybody? Not without magic. Economics of housing is econ 101: if there are more people than available apartments, prices rise so that at some point the number of people who can afford to rent becomes equal to number of apartments available to rent. You can't house more people without building more apartments. That's the only way to provide housing for everybody. It becomes affordable as a side effect of building more apartments. The other "solution", as practiced by NY, SF and apparently Berlin, is to artificially keep prices down with government regulations like rent control. This strategy has been torn to shreds by Nobel-winning economics but more importantly it's clear that it doesn't work. SF's city government keeps talking about "affordable housing" since forever and yet we get to be in the top 2 of the most expensive US cities. If Berlin follows the same "keep prices down, don't allow more buildings" strategy, it'll end up much more expensive 5 years from now.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    It's not about keeping prices down, though - it's about existing inhabitants living there instead of being displaced by wealthier immigrants to the city. That's certainly not uncontroversial; I think it's bullshit, but that's what these people actually want.
krautsourced 10y ago
You're forgetting that the avg income in most major German cities that are not Berlin is higher than there. Living costs in Berlin have gone up massively over the last few years, income however has not changed at all. Having worked as a freelancer for a time, there was a big difference in daily rates I could ask for. In Berlin, 300-350 Euros often were considered high already, where 400-450 was quite normal in the south. See e.g. http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/neue-studie-zu-einkommen-und-wohnen-mietbelastung-in-berlin-fast-wie-in-muenchen/13683428.html http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/neue-studie-zu-einkommen-u... (German)
victornomad 10y ago
Your last argument is exactly the same as Ive seen in other places in the world (rich areas pointing to the lazy bastards that dont want to work) I understand it, but at the same time you cannot (and gladly) have all the cities shaped for maximizing profit in the capitalistic world. Berlin is amazing (used to live there before) but its hard to have a decent job there... Sometimes things cannot be quantified in numbers, and I think Berlin offers a lot to Germany, Europe and the World that goes beyond finance and cars.
Pica_soO 10y ago
I would greatly appreciate it, if the exporting of neo-liberal ideology and the resulting civil wars, could be limited to the capitalistic hellholes in other countrys. I gladly pay taxes here in bavaria for that.

izacus 10y ago

And all the money and jobs you have there in Frankfurt and Munch is because rest of us in EU pay for it by buying cars and other crap. This kind of finger pointing is utterly counter-productive. Without Berlin and rest of europe "your" city is a poor dead starving wasteland and we don't go around debating whether Frankfurt can enact a policy because Polish farmers are feeding them are we? What you're doing is essentially trying to move the conversation away from what Berliners think is important - keeping their quality of life.

allendoerfer 10y ago
> And all the money and jobs you have there in Frankfurt and Munch is because rest of us in EU pay for it by buying cars and other crap. Your are welcome to build better cars. Tesla for example is trying to do it, lets see how we respond to that. This is the point of a market-based economy. It is not like we force them to buy stuff. > Without Berlin and rest of europe "your" city is a poor dead starving wasteland. These cities did well, when half of Berlin and most of todays Europe was behind a wall, so I think you are wrong here. > What you're doing is essentially trying to move the conversation away from what Berliners think is important - keeping their quality of life. They can keep there quality of live, I am just asking for a balanced budget. We are happy to pay our share for the additional expenses Berlin has, for being our capital, but other than that, please finance yourself.
- izacus 10y ago
  > Your are welcome to build better cars. Tesla for example is trying to do it, lets see how we respond to that. This is the point of a market-based economy. It is not like we force them to buy stuff. You're missing the point. Your own city leaders and government lobbies to sell more of that stuff. Without that you wouldn't be able to "finance yourself" - and that's my point. In your arrogance you're forgetting that subsidies are made to keep other germans and europeans buying your crap so you can "finance yourself". > They can keep there quality of live, I am just asking for a balanced budget. We are happy to pay our share for the additional expenses Berlin has, for being our capital, but other than that, please finance yourself. The whole point of existence of a nation-state is that it can improve overall quality of life and security because it redirects and pools financing around and creates environment on which your Frankfurt can "finance itself". Again, without those people that "can't finance themselves", you have little economy and customers to run your market-based economy to finance yourself.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    > The whole point of existence of a nation-state is that it can improve overall quality of life and security because it redirects and pools financing around and creates environment on which your Frankfurt can "finance itself". Again, without those people that "can't finance themselves", you have little economy and customers to run your market-based economy to finance yourself. I think you are just plain wrong here. Frankfurt would do just fine without Berlin. Your points would make sense for the state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is the main source of income, while others have negative budget. But there the relationship you described, is indeed true: People are commuting to Frankfurt, that is why all the taxes are getting paid there. If not for the rural parts of Hesse, Frankfurt would look different. Berlin on the other hand does not really benefit Frankfurt at all, from a tax point of view. In the contrary: If Berlin wasn't there, maybe Frankfurt would be the capital of Germany. Germany is a nation-state, but also a federal nation-state. The whole point of federalism is, that each entity can decide, what quality of live means for them and what they want to do culturally. It also means, that these entities are responsible for collecting their own taxes and paying for their stuff. Thankfully, German states are soon constitutionally mandated to have a balanced budget, so this will end.

eveningcoffee 10y ago

And who can you blame for your higher rent? Berliners?

allendoerfer 10y ago
I would blame biology. People want to live in cities, I moved into a city myself. Economically, this is just a fact, you cannot really complain about. You have to build housing to handle the stream of new people and try to avoid empty apartments. In my city, buildings are being build, sure it can always be faster, but there are already whole new districts being build from scratch.
- tormeh 10y ago
  Berlin doesn't actually need this, in their defense. Sure, skyscrapers are nice, but Berlin has a lot of abandoned buildings they can reach for first. But, goddamn it, building new low-rise buildings... That shit just annoys me.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    It pisses me off whenever I'm walking around Manhattan and I see new buildings going up that are only a few floors tall. It's such a poor use of limited space. And yet there are zoning regulations that limit vast swaths of even Manhattan to low heights (often lower than many of the existing structures that were built awhile ago). Check out this PDF of East Village as an example: http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoning-maps/map12c.pdf http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoni... All of those R7* and R8B zones only allow floor area ratios of 3-4, meaning that if a building takes up the entire lot, which is common, it is limited to those numbers of floors.

germanier 10y ago

I'm not sure why people always bring up the tax redistribution. We speak about small volumes. It's about 10 billion from the states plus 10 billion from the federal government. Berlin get's roughly a third of that. We are talking about a few percent of the states' budgets. The amount of money changing hands is by no means enough to pay for major developments let alone an airport. It's certainly less than the (hard to quantify) advantage of having the market of 12 out of 16 states receiving money in your nation. I don't see a feasible way of changing Berlin's economic situation drastically, given it's a landlocked city state in a unique historical situation. Berlin will for the foreseeable future always be on the receiving end of redistribution.

allendoerfer 10y ago
I brought it up, because to me, the state buying back the houses, was marketed as the solution in this article. You could also articulate the numbers differently: Every Berliner gets ~2000€ per year from Southern Germany (based on your numbers, did not check it). > I don't see a feasible way of changing Berlin's economic situation drastically, given it's a landlocked city state in a unique historical situation. Berlin has fast access to rich Northern Europe by plane, cheap, but people rich, Eastern Europe by car, huge open spaces for development, the advantage of being culturally very rich, already quite international, being known internationally and being financed by other states. And inspite of this article: It also still has cheap rents. Berlin also has a tech scene, which is very much hyped, but in reality tiny compared to SV. Maybe we could try to make this something, which actually creates some bigger companies. I give you, that around Berlin there is basically a green desert, but Berlin itself has a certain size and is growing. How much more advantages could a city possibly have?
- iheartmemcache 10y ago
  Mmm, in every nation-state there is going to be some economic redistribution. For example, I pay two state taxes (NY and MA). Both of these states contribute far more to the federal government than they retrieve in services rendered. Compare that to a state like Alabama, sure it looks like I'm getting mucked over. From an economic POV, I should be outraged that I'm continuously paying money for services that states that consistently run significant net-negatives (e.g. Alabama). I'm fine with that[1] - it's a component of the nation-state, and it provides allows states like Alabama can to keep their highways operational and their schools funded. I accept this as being a member of a modern nation-state so that my fellow countrymen with less opportunities can have a shot at a better life. There are some institutions like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that take tax dollars so I can watch the PBS Newshour, even though it doesn't generate revenue. I am a-okay with the National Endowment of Arts because it produces 'culture', which we'd both agree creates value, despite us not being able to put that numerical value into a spreadsheet. I'm not a German national but I spent a few months in Berlin. It started out as a stint for CCC (back when it was in Berlin not Munich) and I extended my stay because I met some incredible locals. I'm quite fortunate to have traveled extensively enough for work and pleasure to be jaded. You travel enough and you end up meeting the same types of people doing the same things with minor (but very extensive and often very subtle, primarily cultural) differences. Some guy you did a 3 week stint for in in Joburg will have the exact same mannerisms as someone Nicaraguan you end up having a chat with at the airport bar waiting for your flight out of JFK. I say all this as a preface to establish this: I'm not really very much impressed by the novelty of this city versus that city. However, Berlin is one of the few cities that provided a certain unique je ne sais quoi ('feel'? 'ambiance'?) to it, that I'd imagine must have been similar to being in Vienna during the 1920s for philosophy, Greenwich Village NYC for folk-music in the 1960s, or Silicon Valley during the hay-day of NatSemi. Not just in tech, mind you, but take the local music scene there, absolutely spectacular, as is the broader category of arts. The city just overtakes you if you let it, and makes you want to create. Why do you think the population is increasing? I couldn't say for certain but I'd argue it's because others feel similarly. I'm not sure what ingredients or at which proportions to make that specific cocktail, but I'd argue when you have it, it's worth a few extra greenbacks, pounds or Euro to sustain it. == [1] Other than the large percentage which goes to fund the everlasting 'war on terror' and all of the beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex. Let me ask you, if there's a 'war on terror' or a 'war on drugs', Who do I sue for peace if I want to surrender and start negotiating resolution terms? How do you win a war against a concept?</rant>

sgift 10y ago

One of the reasons there still exists some affordable housing in Munich is that the city builds housing itself and rents it out at affordable prices. While other cities sold their housing in the 90s/2000s - because privatization is king, free market loves you, and so on - Munich didn't do any of that, because we recognized that people which don't earn high wages are needed in a city, too. Housing market is still tough, but without any public housing it would be far worse. Long story short: If Berlin acknowledges that a city cannot exist without affordable housing I'm all for it. There are far worse investments of tax money.

tannhaeuser 10y ago
The need for state-financed housing is per definition a failure to leverage natural market forces and points to regulations being the culprit when investment conditions are better than ever at the same time. If the city of Munich has to pay subsidies for public housing, then that's tax payers money being wasted for no reason other than housing and construction laws missing their goal. I may sound like a harsh capitalist, but the money for housing has to be earned somewhere. Right now its being taken from tax payers, when it'd be much better to reduce taxes so people can buy their houses themselves.
- jpetso 10y ago
  I see this line of reasoning a lot, and find it somewhat bewildering. The people most desperately in need of subsidies are also the people who earn little enough income to pay very low taxes already, or none at all. Reducing taxes doesn't do shit when you don't make enough income in the first place. It's not a recipe for giving people in need better opportunities, just a recipe for people in less need to keep their money. Which is a reasonable (if somewhat selfish) point of view, but don't sell it as a solution that actually helps people who can't afford their housing.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  >"The need for state-financed housing is per definition a failure to leverage natural market forces and points to regulations being the culprit when investment conditions are better than ever at the same time." And what do you call it when a city becomes a place that only the wealthy can afford to live in? There are so many people that contribute and make a city function who are not even remotely middle class. Where do they live? Isn't that also a failure? Real-estate in desirable cities is increasingly being used to stash cash[1][2], and there are no shortage of developers who are developing property specifically to attract these types of "tenants." So no simply relying on "natural market forces"is not really an inclusionary solution. [1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/planners-must-take-back-control-of-london https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/planne... [2]http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-york-real-estate-2014-6/ http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-y...

jojoo 10y ago

I think the question is: How big of a difference in living standard is acceptable in one Country. Go to a public school in berlin, look at the toilets. Chances are very high they might be defect, stink and malfunctioning. I worked as a special eds teacher in Neukölln. We're supposed to train our students how to use the toilet. Half of the time the toilets in the first floor were broken. That means me had to stand in line for restrooms instead of doing some work. When the toilets got repaired after half a year the toilets in the basement broke down. Our students became very good at waiting in line. Now i work in a school in the southwest of germany. If a toilet breaks down, chances are it will be repaired on the same day. If they need an external contractor in will take one day. All of the students live in germany. Yet one get clean, functioning toilets, the others not. (Fun fact: Berlin paid for my education, now Baden-Württenberg gets a university-trained teacher for free...)

Overtonwindow 10y ago
I think this is indicative everywhere. Poorer regions have more challenges and get ignored, over wealthier.
posterboy 10y ago
Fun fact: They still pay you (I hope). Also, by OP's line of reasoning they paid for the university to begin with. But on the other hand, they are draining the talent. So, give and take.
allendoerfer 10y ago
I think parts of it can be solved, by centralizing education. In my opinion Berlin (as well as Hamburg and Bremen) really does not need its own Kultusministerium, money saved there can directly be sent to schools. Maybe also the funding for schools could come from federal sources to a higher degree, but I do not know the exact situation. Btw, the state you live in is called Baden-Württemberg.

rndgermandude 10y ago

Your taxes do not fund "this" exactly. It's not like Berlin govt will let people live in those places for free, just at an affordable price point. They can do this because they are not oriented towards maximum profit, unlike private investors. Bundesland Berlin being a landlord in all this might end up effectively slightly subsidizing some of the rents in some more expensive-to-acquire-and-maintain buildings but operate at a slight margin in other cheaper buildings. In the end, if they do it right (and I admit that's a big if) they should be operating close to break-even, probably with a small profit to build some reserves for unexpected future costs. Instead of complaining that Berlin tries to do something (too much) against rent price hikes and gentrification, complain instead that "cities like Munich, Frankfurt or Hamburg" do not do enough to prevent rent price hikes.

anothercomment 10y ago
If the government rents out places below market races, it is subsidizing those renters. It is leaving money on the table that it could use to pay for things that it pays for with taxpayer money from Munich instead.
- posterboy 10y ago
  If the price is equal to the utility cost, then it isn't below market rate, but exactly matching it. The other prices are over market rate.
  - anothercomment 10y ago
    How do you define utility cost - isn't it kind of equivalent to market rate (what it is worth for people to pay)? I can not really make sense of your statement? If the prices are over market rate, how to they find renters?
    - posterboy 10y ago
      Utility cost was the wrong idiom, I meant, like, the overall expenses. Keep in mind the OP before you > ... and that's a big if ... In other words, If the government can operate housing over a long term at break-even, a stabilizing market needs to be converging towards that limit, otherwise they couldn't break even. I was implicitly limiting my remark to the market rate of the expenses, not the income of the operation. The same can be applied to the other side of the equation, the price the inhabitants have to pay. The market can be stable only if both sides match. Of course that's a gross simplification, but so is the term market rate.

lis 10y ago

I would love to see some actual numbers on this, but here is another perspective on this: A) Students educated in Berlin are far more likely to move to other cities, since there are e.g. no jobs in production. How many engineers working at Daimler did study in Berlin (i.e. costing the city money, without contributing by paying taxes)? B) A lot of large companies are currently opening offices in Berlin. They are gladly using the services of the city, as are their well-payed employees, effectively raising the rent. However, they will still pay taxes at their headquarters in a different city. As I said, I have no numbers on this, but the situation is way to complex to just say that Berlin is wasting tax money. It certainly is - in a lot of areas - but so are others states. Instead of being pissed that Berlin is trying to improve the situation and keep the city affordable for everybody, maybe we should start asking how we can achieve the same in other sought after locations as well.

jojoo 10y ago
Baden-Württenberg has even a Ad-Campain to recruit teachers from Berlin.
kjksf 10y ago
Affordable? Maybe. For everybody? Not without magic. Economics of housing is econ 101: if there are more people than available apartments, prices rise so that at some point the number of people who can afford to rent becomes equal to number of apartments available to rent. You can't house more people without building more apartments. That's the only way to provide housing for everybody. It becomes affordable as a side effect of building more apartments. The other "solution", as practiced by NY, SF and apparently Berlin, is to artificially keep prices down with government regulations like rent control. This strategy has been torn to shreds by Nobel-winning economics but more importantly it's clear that it doesn't work. SF's city government keeps talking about "affordable housing" since forever and yet we get to be in the top 2 of the most expensive US cities. If Berlin follows the same "keep prices down, don't allow more buildings" strategy, it'll end up much more expensive 5 years from now.
- tormeh 10y ago
  It's not about keeping prices down, though - it's about existing inhabitants living there instead of being displaced by wealthier immigrants to the city. That's certainly not uncontroversial; I think it's bullshit, but that's what these people actually want.

krautsourced 10y ago

You're forgetting that the avg income in most major German cities that are not Berlin is higher than there. Living costs in Berlin have gone up massively over the last few years, income however has not changed at all. Having worked as a freelancer for a time, there was a big difference in daily rates I could ask for. In Berlin, 300-350 Euros often were considered high already, where 400-450 was quite normal in the south. See e.g. http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/neue-studie-zu-einkommen-und-wohnen-mietbelastung-in-berlin-fast-wie-in-muenchen/13683428.html http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/neue-studie-zu-einkommen-u... (German)

victornomad 10y ago

Your last argument is exactly the same as Ive seen in other places in the world (rich areas pointing to the lazy bastards that dont want to work) I understand it, but at the same time you cannot (and gladly) have all the cities shaped for maximizing profit in the capitalistic world. Berlin is amazing (used to live there before) but its hard to have a decent job there... Sometimes things cannot be quantified in numbers, and I think Berlin offers a lot to Germany, Europe and the World that goes beyond finance and cars.

Pica_soO 10y ago

I would greatly appreciate it, if the exporting of neo-liberal ideology and the resulting civil wars, could be limited to the capitalistic hellholes in other countrys. I gladly pay taxes here in bavaria for that.