The rents are too high!

We can no longer afford the rents in Hamburg! The rents on the market have gone up to 13.40 Euro per square meter on average – in some districts even up to 16 Euros.

Even people from the middle class struggle to pay these prices. This leads to an ongoing displacement – renters are forced to move to outer districts, leave Hamburg entirely or are even driven into homelessness.

New construction doesn’t lower the rent

Hamburg‘s senat tries to address the problem by building new apartments. But this is not to the renter‘s advantage, because the construction of new luxury apartments does not stop the massiv increase of rates. New social housing doesn’t even compensate the annual loss of affordable housing.

During the 80ies we had 350.000 social housing apartments in Hamburg – today there is only one quarter left. Not even every fourth eligible household can actually get a social housing. And it’s getting even worse.

Let’s expropriate and socialize housing companies and lower the rents!

The problem is the private, profit oriented housing market, which is dominated by big companies und greedy landlords. Only their houses should be expropriated and turned into democratically managed common property. Cooperative and state owned housing companies will explicitly not be expropriated.

If tenants do not have to pay for the dividends of real estate companies like Vonovia, we could lower the rents drastically. This would significantly reduce the rental index of which all tenants in Hamburg would profit. Hamburg‘s household budget will not be affected, because the rental income will pay for the expropriation‘s costs. This is how we can effectively support renters and stop the housing displacement.

Deutsche Wohnung & Co showed us how to win

In September 2021 the majority of the people of Berlin voted in a referendum for the expropriation of Deutsche Wohnen, Vonovia and other big housing companies. Our initiative Hamburg Enteignet started directly after the renter‘s victory in Berlin. We are convinced that the majority of Hamburg will also vote yes for expropriation and affordable housing!We, too, will fight for a referendum for the expropriation and socialization of housing based on article 15 of the German constitution. We are going to start collecting signatures in September 2022 so we can vote as soon as possible. Join us! We need you.