No more rent increases: The Left calls for a ban for six years

No more rent increases: The Left calls for a ban for six years

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The Left calls for a legal ban on rent increases






No rent increase for six years, billions for social housing and socially staggered additional costs: The Left is focusing on the issue of affordable housing in the election campaign.

In view of rapidly rising rents and a rampant housing shortage, the Left wants to legally ban rent increases. “As an immediate measure, a rent freeze for six years is needed,” says a position paper that party leader Jan van Aken plans to present this Monday. The period should be used to initiate a nationwide rent cap. The paper is there star before.

According to the Left, the aim of the rent cap must be not only to slow down the explosion in rents, but also to end and reverse it. In overheated housing markets, “particularly high rents should also be reduced”.

From the party’s point of view, the current rent cap is ineffective and promotes “outrageous practices”. A third of the apartments in major cities are now rented out furnished in order to circumvent legal regulations.

It’s not just the rent increase that needs to be stopped

The party is also calling for 20 billion euros to be invested in non-profit housing every year. Currently, more than eleven million tenant households in Germany are entitled to social housing. “We want to build 100,000 non-profit apartments per year, because non-profit housing keeps rent affordable,” the paper says.

In addition, the Left wants to make excessive additional demands for additional costs a punishable offense. “One in 12 households cannot heat in winter due to lack of money, while housing companies make record profits from additional costs.” In the long term, there must be “socially staggered heating and electricity costs”, for example with low-cost basic tariffs. In addition, state price controls must be introduced for electricity and gas prices.

Left leader van Aken criticized Chancellor Olaf Scholz for canceling the housing summit planned for next week. Instead, Federal Construction Minister Klara Geywitz (both SPD) is now scheduled to receive representatives from politics, business and civil society for discussions on December 5th.

Scholz has shrunk “from being the appointed rent registrar to being a total failure for affordable housing,” van Aken told the newspaper star. The cancellation of the summit was “spineless”. The housing policy spokeswoman for the Left group in the Bundestag, Caren Lay, made a similar statement. “The traffic light leaves a disastrous balance sheet on the issue of rents and housing construction,” she said. Social, non-profit housing and a rent cap must be the “top priority”.

Source: Stern

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