The Fight in Berlin for Fair Rents

Michael Burchardt takes a look at Berlin, a city once shaped by cheap rents, empty buildings and radical imagination. From postwar squats to underground clubs, its rebellious spirit was forged in abandoned spaces - but as property speculation soars and cultural institutions vanish, Berliners are fighting back. This is a story of resistance, expropriation, and a city struggling to decide who it really belongs to.

Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg - Apartment building and cafe at the corner of Dunckerstraße & Raumerstraße - via Wikimedia Commons

From Ruins to Radicalism

Since the rubble-strewn aftermath of the Second World War, Berlin has been defined by something rare in a European capital: its relatively cheap rents. For decades, working-class districts like Kreuzberg, protected by extensive rent controls, became havens for a countercultural world of art collectives, squats and cultural centres such as Mehringhof. The availability of affordable living spaces attracted a creative, rebellious spirit which laid the foundations for the city’s unique identity.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, East Berlin emptied out. As residents and employers left en masse, they abandoned not only crumbling Plattenbau towers but also entire industrial zones, leaving behind vast areas of vacant homes, disused factories and abandoned infrastructure. This abundance of empty space provided unprecedented potential for the city’s counterculture initiatives, art and nightlife, which began to take shape in empty warehouses and former industrial spaces. As vividly captured by OSTKREUZ, a photography agency founded in East Berlin in 1990, the city’s image during this period was defined by empty spaces, squat movements and activist street art.  

The Roots of a Crisis

Although the affordability of space that once fueled Berlin’s countercultural movements was vital to the city’s identity, the early 2000s marked a turning point. At a time of cheap rents and a surplus of housing, the city’s neoliberal mayor Klaus Wowereit saw the sale of extensive housing stock as a way of paying off Berlin’s enormous debts. Between 2002 and 2007, over 110,000 flats were sold, over 30% of the city’s entire housing stock, whilst no limits were imposed on how much landlords could charge for new contracts. At the time, rents were low and vacancies high. It seemed inconceivable that Berlin could ever become unaffordable.

But as global financial markets looked for safe assets in the wake of the 2008 crash, Berlin’s undervalued real estate became a goldmine. Meanwhile, the city’s population was swelling. Kreuzberg’s rents surged by 74% in five years, and Berliners soon found themselves priced out of their own city. Suddenly, Berlin’s reputation as an “arm aber sexy” (poor but sexy) city had made it irrestistible to buyers, but devastating for renters.

“Berlin’s fight for fair fent has become a test of democracy and of who the city is for.”

Cultural Collapse: The Price of Profit

As rents soared, Berlin’s famous nightlife scene began to crack. Venues that once thrived in the city’s abandoned corners began to disappear. Some couldn’t afford new leases. Others were priced out by hotels, office blocks, or luxury flats. Knaack-Club, Bar 25 and Griessmühle all closed during the 2010s, whilst Watergate shut its doors in 2024. As the Watergate team explained in a heartfelt farewell statement, the Berlin club scene “ums Leben kämpft” (is fighting for its life) under the strain of rising rents and mounting economic pressures.

Meanwhile, the clubs that remain charge increasingly unaffordable entry prices, often exceeding $20. What was once a nightlife scene defined by its radical inclusivity is becoming increasingly out of reach. In combination with severe funding cuts to the arts by the city government, these developments have paved the way for the erosion of Berlin’s cultural life, to be replaced by faceless commercial spaces. 

Rent Controls and Reform

In 2015, Germany introduced the Mietpreisbremse (rent price brake), a law meant to stop landlords from charging more than 10% above standard area rates. But in Berlin, it barely made a difference. Landlords quickly found a loophole: the law didn’t apply to apartments which were listed as both furnished and temporary. Today, around 70% of flats on the market in Kreuzberg are listed as such, a convenient excuse for higher prices. The result is that Berliners are paying far more than they can afford, often just for the right to stay in their own city.

With rents still spiralling, Berlin passed a radical Mietendeckel (rent cap) in 2020. The reform froze prices for five yearsand even demanded reductions in some cases. It was bold and hugely popular, but short-lived. Real estate lobbyists hit back with a polished PR campaign: “Bauern statt deckeln” (Build, don’t cap). Billboards screamed that the reform would halt new construction – despite the fact that new builds weren’t affected at all. In 2021, the Federal Court deemed the cap unconstitutional. Tenants were ordered to repay the rent which they had “saved” – often in one lump sum. 

Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen

Berlin wasn’t ready to give up. The initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen (DWE) called for the city to forcibly acquire housing stock from landlords who owned over 3,000 apartments – a move that would bring tens of thousands of fllats back under public control. In 2021, a referendum on the issue passed with over 56% support. But the city’s SPD-led government, under Franziska Giffey, stalled. An “expert commission” was forced, and activists accused the mayor of dragging her feet. Two years later, that very commission concluded expropriation would be legal. Meanwhile, average rents in Berlin had risen by more than a quarter. Nevertheless, little has changed.

In the 2025 federal election, Die Linke surged to become Berlin’s largest party – the only major party to have consistently supported expropriation. While the vote doesn’t directly shape the city government, it reflects something real and urgent: a majority of Berliners are no longer willing to wait. Berlin’s fight for fair fent has become a test of democracy and of who the city is for. As one DWE activist put it in a 2023 interview: “Wer nicht enteignet, sollte auch nicht regieren” (Those who do not expropriate should not govern).