Housing and Social Sustainability Policies in Berlin

In Berlin, I visited the Housing and Social Sustainability Department where the Policy Officer, André Moschke, lectured us on the housing policies that were implemented in Berlin. Due to Berlin being a large city with a large population, housing prices have been increasing drastically which has caused income inequality. One of the reasons why Berlin has such a large population is due to the recent refugee migration. This was on of the major reasons for their recent drastic increase in housing prices.

André Moschke discussed about Berlin’s policies to control the increase in rent prices. For example, he mentioned a Rent Freeze which is a policy that Berlin implemented so that the rent prices must not be higher than 10% above local rent prices. However, the policy did not last very long as landlords felt very restricted. With that being said, the policy did help stabilize housing prices when in place.

During his lecture, my classmates mentioned a possible solution for Berlin; to build vertically instead of horizontally. However, André Moschke put an end to that idea as he discussed about how Berlin doesn’t want tall skyscrapers as it blocks the vision of Berlin’s TV tower at Alexanderplatz. Berlin’s TV tower can be seen in the image above. The reason why they do not want to block the tower is because it has a lot of historic meaning as it was built by the East Germans to showcase their power.