Ideologies set to clash

LOW-COST housing advocates are launching a campaign to force Berlin’s state government into taking over nearly 250,000 apartments worth billions from corporate owners to fight rising rents in one of Germany’s hottest real estate markets.

The fight pits two philosophies against one another: Free-market companies that see real estate as a means to profit, and housing activists who see affordable rent not only as a necessity but as central to the city’s character.

Its prospects are uncertain at this early stage and a resolution will take years, but the successes of other such campaigns have shown the strength of social activists.

“There need to be some rules here for the game – it’s a city, not just open land for people to do what they want,” said Thomas McGath, a representative of the group behind the campaign, known as Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. “It’s not something that can be completely determined by the market.”

The city had been a lowrent mecca after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 opened the gates to the economically depressed former communist east of the city.