Left leader Schwerdtner assumes rent increases even after expropriations

The federal chairwoman of the Left, Ines Schwerdtner, cannot promise tenants falling rents even after large housing groups are incorporated. The party leader admitted this on “Bosetti Late Night” on 3sat. During the election campaign, Schwerdtner himself advocated removing apartments from market logic in order to reduce rental prices in the long term or at least keep them stable.

Moderator Sarah Bosetti asked Schwerdtner whether the left-wing politician could guarantee that rents would not have to be increased to finance the expropriation. Schwerdtner explained that the limit on annual rent increases to a maximum of two percent announced by top candidate Elif Eralp should also apply to socialized apartments.

Eralp's plans initially affect the approximately 400,000 state-owned apartments in Berlin, said Schwerdtner. "It can be increased to a maximum of two percent. And that would then also be the value that the socialized apartments, for example, would have." Schwerdtner justified the initiative with a comparison to the private housing group Vonovia. This added six percent to the last rent increase, she explained. “If they’re in public hands, they won’t rise as much.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to lower the rents at all?” asked moderator Sarah Bosetti. Schwerdtner replied that she would “very, very much like to lower the rents”. But: “The seriousness of the bill means: Of course we have to maintain the apartments.” The politician said that it was not known what condition the apartments were in. Tenants would report mold and holes in stairwells. "If we could lower it, we would do it immediately. I just don't want to tell people nonsense."

When asked whether this had reached people, Schwerdtner said: “I can’t promise any single tenant that rents will go down.” Bosetti then asked again specifically: “Did you say that you wanted to reduce rents through socialization?” Answer: “I never said that.”

In fact, Schwerdtner did not promise any rent reductions for every single household during the election campaign. However, she explicitly linked socialization with the aim of reducing or at least stabilizing rental prices. “We have to remove some of the apartments from market logic again in order to really reduce the rental price in the long term or at least keep it stable,” she said in August. WELT reported on it.

Berlin's top candidate Eralp made similar comments. During the election campaign, she campaigned for a “reduction in prices” and in this context mentioned, in addition to social housing, “of course the socialization of the large real estate companies”.

In their explorations at the state level in Berlin, the Left, the Greens and the SPD decided to expropriate companies with more than 10,000 apartments and to provide up to 16 billion euros for this. Compensation is intended to be significantly lower than the current value. In Berlin, Vonovia would be particularly affected - but also companies such as Heimstaden, Covivio, the Adler Group or DVI. Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) had announced that the federal government would react quickly to the plans - he wanted to present a legal ban on expropriation.