Rents are rising nationwide, and despite the low interest rates, the construction costs are too high for many.
There are also ecological considerations: Are new buildings in keeping with the times?
Berlin - Perhaps another sign that Corona is currently losing its importance: For the first time in months, “Hard but fair” is no longer about the pandemic and its consequences.
The show takes on the subject of "living" and pulls out a sweeping blow: Barely affordable living space in German metropolitan areas, speculation and vacancy on the one hand - demands for expropriations, rent brakes and rent caps on the other.
Or as Plasberg puts it: "Ban single-family houses, expropriate housing groups: How radical should housing policy be?"
"Hard but fair" - these guests discuss with:
Amira Mohamed Ali (Die Linke) -
Group leader
Kai Wegner (CDU) -
building policy spokesman for the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, switched on
Katja Dörner (B'90 / The Greens) -
Lord Mayor of the City of Bonn
Gerhard Matzig
- book author and architecture journalist for the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Aygül Özkan -
Managing Director of the Central Association of the Real Estate Industry in Germany
Katja Greenfield -
teacher and mother, moved with her family from Cologne to the surrounding area
Left party leader Amira Mohamed Ali defends her party's radical housing policy.
In Berlin, the Left supports the expropriation demand of a citizens' initiative in relation to the real estate company "Deutsche Wohnen", which owns 110,000 rental apartments in the capital.
Mohamed Ali makes it clear: "Expropriations are even provided for in the Basic Law and not an invention of the left!"
The private living situation of the left parliamentary group leader, who admits that she will soon be moving into a semi-detached house with her husband in her city of Oldenburg, seems a little contradictory.
Property is a "desire for security and arrival" that she can empathize, says Mohamed Ali meekly.
Plasberg summarizes the feeling in numbers and proves that the left woman is not alone with her wish: 63 percent of Germans dream of owning a home, according to the moderator.
However, only just under half could turn their dream into reality.
Plasberg, who also comes out as the owner of a semi-detached house, sums it up succinctly: "Without an inheritance, without winning the lottery, nothing works."
Construction costs in Germany have risen by 70 percent in the last 20 years
To change that, Aygül Özkan, the managing director of the Central Association of the Real Estate Industry in Germany, comes around the corner with a simple plan: More must be built for more affordable living space in cities.
If the supply increases, so Özkan, the price will also decrease.
And building in Germany would only be possible with private investors.
Özkan: “They build 95 percent, the state only builds five.
To do this, we need an investment-friendly climate. ”That means above all: lower property prices, but also fewer regulations - Özkan refers to the more than 20,000 building regulations in Germany.
In the last 20 years, construction costs in this country have risen by 70 percent, in comparison they are only half as high in the Netherlands.
"Those who can afford property should not be pushed out of the cities," emphasizes the Berlin CDU top candidate - and homeowner - Kai Wegner, who wants to be elected as the new governing mayor of the capital in September, the statements of the previous speaker.
The left parliamentary group leader is certain: "If we don't regulate, rents will explode!"
The left-wing parliamentary group leader Mohamed Ali has an obvious problem with the praise of the self-regulation of the free market economy and protests: "The building is not determined by people, but the market!" Above all, expensive condominiums are being built, not what people are doing and good for the cities.
One has to ask oneself who owns the city, said Mohamed Ali, and that cannot simply be left to speculators who are only after profit.
"If we don't regulate, rents will explode!" And Bonn's mayor Katja Dörner from Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen adds: "Speculative vacancy is a real problem in cities and there is also a need for regulation."
Plasberg wants to know from his guests whether expropriation is really the appropriate means.
Özkan states soberly: “One year of the rent cover is a disaster.
It is a brake on investment, a brake on modernization and a brake on construction.
The supply has gone down, people are no longer moving, nothing comes on the market and if so, it is sold. ”CDU man Wegner calculates that instead of the compensation payments that would be due in the event of expropriation, new living space will also be created could be: At 36 billion euros, for example, that would be 300,000 new apartments.
"Hard but fair" talk guest Matzig calls expropriation plans "bizarre"
Architecture journalist Gerhard Matzig also notes with astonishment that social housing, for which Germany was once a global pioneer, has meanwhile been largely privatized and that the development now apparently wants to be reversed: “First the state is withdrawing from its responsibility, cheap To create living space and have the market done, only to say, now you will be expropriated. ”He thinks that is“ bizarre ”.
How it works, explains teacher Katja Greenfield, who moved with her husband and two children from Cologne to a neighboring town 40 kilometers away in order to build a new, energy-saving house with 200 square meters and a garden at reasonable prices.
Plasberg enumerates the disadvantages with a regretful look: Longer travel times to work or to visit friends and cultural life.
This has the opposite effect on the viewer: Real problems look different!
Conclusion of the “hard but fair” talk
The fact that there are already one or the other problem topic in the world in addition to Corona is a good approach.
But does it really have to be this at the start?
And then with this guest choice?
A representative of "Deutsche Wohnen" would have been interesting, in a dispute with the Left MP.
Or a statement from a family from a major German city that is actually suffering from the high rents - perhaps exacerbated by the situation due to short-time work or financial losses due to the Corona measures in order to stay on the ball.
The talk seems very “made up” - and thematically like “Kai out of the box”.
