Dissens · Lukas Ondreka

Sie wollen Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen - diesmal wirklich 😉

·1 hr 17 min·6 clips

The law compensates corporations at 40-60% of market value by cutting out speculative land value gains since 2013.

1. This episode of the Was-Tun-Podcast features hosts Ingen and Valentin in conversation with Luise and Thomas from Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen (DWE) about the initiative's newly drafted housing socialisation law. 2. Luise works in DWE's press and public relations team and has been with the initiative since 2021; Thomas is a lawyer coordinating the legal working group that drafted the socialisation law alongside a law firm and a scientific advisory board. 3. The episode argues that after four years of Senate obstruction following the successful 2021 referendum, a citizen-drafted Gesetzesvolksentscheid is the only path to actually implementing the democratically mandated policy. 4. In 2021 DWE won a Beschlussvolksentscheid with 58–59% support, requiring the Senate to draft a law socialising housing companies with more than 3,000 Berlin units — but SPD mayor Franziska Giffey, a declared opponent of socialisation, instead convened a year-long expert commission as a delay tactic. 5. The expert commission ultimately ruled in DWE's favour, confirming Berlin has the legal competence to pass such a socialisation law and that the Berlin constitution does not prohibit it — but incoming CDU mayor Kai Wegner then proposed a framework law his own party immediately announced it would challenge in court. 6. Luise describes these four years as 'Demokratieverweigerung' (democracy denial), after which DWE resolved to write the law itself so that a positive Gesetzesvolksentscheid would take direct legal effect without further Senate action. 7. The proposed law would socialise private, profit-oriented housing companies with more than 3,000 Berlin units, allowing them to keep the first 3,000 while transferring all additional units to public ownership; excluded are public housing companies, cooperatives, non-profits, and church providers. 8. One in five Berliners lives in housing poverty — falling below the poverty line once housing costs are factored in — while the number of social housing units in Berlin has halved over the last ten years. 9. The initiative currently runs 15 neighbourhood-organising projects citywide, targeting specific corporate abuses: Vonovia issuing false heating-cost statements with back-payments of up to €6,000, Heimstaden bypassing the Mietpreisbremse through sham renovation claims, and Adler leaving the Weisse Siedlung in Südneukölln in disrepair. 10. Luise notes that Vonovia ignores court rulings on Mietspiegelmerkmale, banking on most tenants being too scared to contest individual cases, so unlawful rent increases feed into the broader rent index and raise costs for everyone. 11. The compensation model pays 40–60% of conventional market value: building value is calculated at current replacement cost, while land value gains above 3.5% per year since 2013 are excluded as speculative rather than productive. 12. Thomas notes the expert committee data showed Berlin land prices rising 40–70% year-on-year in some years after 2013, which the law treats as speculation rather than earned value, since Berlin's attractiveness is a collective social product not created by the landlord. 13. Compensation is paid in interest-bearing bonds over 100 years, structured so that refinancing comes from rental income at socially affordable rents — meaning the law is designed to be budget-neutral for the Berlin government while delivering roughly 250,000 flats into public hands. 14. The planned public management body would be an Anstalt öffentlichen Rechts (statutory public institution), which Thomas estimates would become Europe's second-largest public housing provider, comparable in scale to Vienna's Wiener Wohnen. 15. To prevent legal challenges modelled on the 2021 Mietendeckel precedent, the law specifies all criteria explicitly in the text, leaving administrators no interpretive discretion, and includes a constitutional competence basis already confirmed by the expert commission. 16. Anti-circumvention provisions consolidate all subsidiaries and affiliated companies into a single Unternehmensverbund for the 3,000-unit threshold, and a Bestandsstichtag (asset freeze date) is triggered when the citizens' petition is declared admissible, neutralising any pre-emptive sell-offs or break-ups. 17. Enforcement provisions include mandatory disclosure of all properties owned by each corporation within set deadlines, backed by fines of up to €200 million per violation. 18. The episode is a policy-dense interview in a relaxed, somewhat informal format, with the hosts frequently drawing on their own prior experience collecting signatures for DWE in 2021 and sharing personal housing situations at the top of the show. 19. Listeners interested in housing policy, tenant rights, German constitutional law, or the mechanics of direct democracy in Berlin will find this episode directly applicable. 20. Listeners outside Berlin, those seeking lighter content on the housing crisis without legal detail, or English-language listeners will likely not be the primary audience.

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