Eberswalde fights for affordable living space: tenant reasons club!

Eberswalde fights for affordable living space: tenant reasons club!

in Eberswalde, a city in Barnim, tenants have joined together to secure their living situation after a planned renovation. The WHG, a local housing company, is planning to sell a city villa on Danckelmannstrasse to the current tenants. The building urgently needs renovation measures, but the WHG has sought high rents of around 15 euros per square meter, which causes the tenants to worry. In this context, they support the purchase of the house by a newly founded association and a GmbH to prevent displacement and promote affordable living space, as reports [RBB24]

Particularly affected are students and scientists who, with direct help from the "Mietshäuser-Syndikat", are strong for the joint acquisition. This syndicate supports projects of this kind nationwide and aims to create collective property in the form of self -governing residential projects. The tenants currently need around one million euros for the acquisition, whereby they collect direct loans from friends and families to make a contribution. The rental prices should remain less than ten euros per square meter in the new model, while the new contract rents are currently around eight euros. It is interesting that Eberswalde is not affected by the rental price brake, which applies in other municipalities in Brandenburg.

support and solidarity in housing

The Mietshäuser Syndikat, which comprises a total of 201 projects and 24 initiatives in Germany, promotes solidarity housing and prevents reprivatizations. All projects are self-organized and rely on a house GmbH as a legal form that manages the property together. With important decisions, such as rent or conversions, the house association has sole voting rights, while trading in real estate remains excluded for all times, which gives the projects stability. This structure promotes the solidar car transfer between the projects and creates security for the residents, as there is an exclusion of claims to increases in value and hostile takeovers, as can be found on [syndikat.org].

The tenants in Eberswalde are not alone. A current study by the Hans Böckler Foundation shows that access to affordable living space in Germany is severely restricted. Despite government measures such as housing benefit, rental price brake and financial support for social housing, these instruments do not achieve the intended goals. Social housing in particular is underfunded, which means that 1.9 million cheap apartments are missing in the largest German cities. The deficit is particularly pronounced in metropolises, where many households have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. These findings illustrate the urgency of initiatives such as that in Eberswalde, since social housing is based on an essential function in ensuring living space, as is explained on [boeckler.de].