German interior minister moves to curb takeovers of big housing firms
Alexander Dobrindt plans a law allowing the socialisation of rental housing only in cases of "compelling necessity" and with compensation at market value. The Left Party says it would fail in court.
Archive image · Photo: Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt plans to make it much harder for states to take large housing companies into public ownership, under a planned investment protection law first reported by Bild and confirmed in detail by his ministry to dpa. A state government would have to prove a "compelling necessity" and show it had exhausted other options, such as investment in and funding for housing construction. Compensation would be paid directly in cash at market value, set by an expert appraisal.
The move targets plans by the Left Party, the Greens and the Social Democrats in Berlin to socialise private landlords with more than 10,000 apartments, setting aside about 16 billion euros in compensation, likely below market value. Dobrindt, of the Bavarian CSU, told Bild the law would make clear that an "arbitrary left-wing socialisation fetish" is incompatible with the constitution.
Left Party co-leader Luigi Pantisano said such a law would not survive at the Federal Constitutional Court and urged the SPD to choose between the "rent mafia" and tenants. Conservative lawmaker Jan-Marco Luczak said the debate alone was already preventing new housing, Tagesspiegel reported.