Justice

Berlin’s Plan to Preserve Affordable Apartments: Buy Them

To ward off rent hikes and evictions at the hands of new building owners, the city will purchase about 700 homes the much-coveted Karl Marx Allee neighborhood.
One of the apartment blocks on Karl Marx Allee just bought by the cityJoachim Herrmann/Reuters

In fall 2018, residents of East Berlin’s Karl Marx Allee—a grand Stalin-era boulevard lined with massive state-owned apartment blocks that have become desirable residences in this fast-gentrifying city—faced an alarming situation. About 700 homes were to be sold to a mega-landlord called Deutsche Wohnen; soon, they feared, poorer tenants would be evicted as their new landlord used legal loopholes to hike the rents beyond levels they could afford.

But then city leaders proposed a novel rescue plan: The city would step in and buy the apartments, barring the takeover and ensuring that the rents stayed manageable. This week, news came through that the city had acted on its plan. As of last Friday, the city is the owner of 674 of the apartments, making the Deutsche Wohnen sale impossible. As one headline put it, Karl Marx Allee “belongs to Berlin once more.” It could also be just the beginning of something even bigger.