BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Two years after its successful referendum, the Berlin initiative "Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co" has announced a second attempt to socialize large housing companies. This time it wants to let the Berliners vote immediately on a Vergesellschaftungs-Gesetz, as representatives of the initiative announced on Tuesday at a "public press conference" in front of the Rotes Rathaus. Thus it is to be prevented that the senate delays the conversion of the request. This is exactly what the initiative has so far repeatedly accused state politics of doing.

Since the successful referendum in September 2021, the situation on the Berlin housing market has worsened significantly, the initiative argued. For many the rents are hardly still affordable. The landlords pressed the tenants out as never before. It therefore now wants to tackle the drafting of an appropriate law. To finance its activities, it wants to launch a crowdfunding campaign. How long it will all take is an open question.

The hope is to ultimately put the brakes on further rent increases with the planned law. Achim Lindemann, speaking on behalf of the initiative, estimates that the chances are good of getting the necessary approval even if the vote is held independently of elections to the House of Representatives or the Bundestag. Eighty percent of the people in Berlin live in rented apartments, and the rent crisis continues to worsen. In the referendum, at least a quarter of all Berliners eligible to vote must support the issue.

In the successful referendum on September 26, 2021, a good 59 percent of voters had voted for the socialization of real estate companies with more than 3,000 apartments in Berlin. The then red-green-red Senate then appointed a commission of experts, which began work in April 2022. In its final report, presented at the end of June, it came to the conclusion that the socialization of housing companies was possible.

However, the black-red Senate has no plans to make use of this possibility quickly. It has announced that it will first draft a framework law on socialization, which is not to come into force until two years after its promulgation. Before that, it is to be reviewed by the Federal Constitutional Court./ah/DP/nas