“Will finally choke off housing construction”
Advance to rent freeze provokes criticism
08/27/2023 5:41 p.m
The paper has not even been officially approved by the SPD parliamentary group. But the idea of largely limiting rent increases for three years is already provoking strong opposition. That would further slow down the already sluggish housing construction, they say.
The proposal from the SPD for a multi-year, nationwide rent freeze meets with some sharp rejection – even within the traffic light coalition. Ideas for a stricter rental price brake or a rent freeze had already been “rightly rejected” during the coalition negotiations, explained the construction and housing policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Daniel Föst. “The Ministry of Construction and the SPD should finally concentrate on fighting the construction crisis before our construction industry collapses completely.” Sufficient available living space is “the best protection for tenants”.
The Union criticized the SPD initiative as “absurd”. A rent freeze makes more housing projects uneconomical and ultimately only increases the housing shortage, explained the construction policy spokesman for the Union faction in the Bundestag, Jan-Marco Luczak. “It’s the increased construction costs that we have to deal with.” Rising rents would only be combated “in the long term if we build more, faster and more cheaply,” added Luczak.
As the “Bild am Sonntag” reported, a catalog of measures for tenant protection is to be decided at a meeting of the SPD parliamentary group on Monday. The most far-reaching point is therefore the nationwide rent freeze. Then landlords in areas with a tight housing market would only be able to increase the rent by six percent in three years – until the local comparative rent was reached.
“Rent freeze finally chokes off housing construction”
According to the report of the “Bild am Sonntag”, according to the plans of the SPD parliamentary group, among other things, the penalties for rent extortion should be tightened. According to the report, the SPD wants to make layoffs for personal use more difficult. According to the newspaper, the plans also stipulate that it should no longer be possible to circumvent the rental price brake by allegedly furnishing the apartment or renting it out for temporary use. According to the ideas of the SPD, price increases in index rents should also be slowed down.
The Greens in the Bundestag welcomed the catalog of demands of the SPD as a whole. “The rents, which have been exploding for years, are increasingly driving people with low and middle incomes to their breaking point,” said Christina-Johanne Schröder, spokeswoman for housing, urban development, construction and municipalities, of the newspaper “Welt”.
Criticism of the SPD paper came from business. “You may win election campaigns with a rent freeze, but you will finally choke off housing construction,” said Kai Warnecke, President of the real estate owners’ association Haus und Grund, to the “Handelsblatt”. Economics Veronika Grimm told the newspapers of the Funke media group: “A rent freeze slows down housing construction even further and increases the already immense uncertainty among investors in general.” This exacerbates conflicts over housing.