Weary Berliners head to polls seeking balm for crisis-hit housing market

Berlin holds state elections Sunday with housing dominating every poll, as rents have risen nearly 70% in the last decade even though 84% of the city rents. The population has grown by roughly 500,000 since 2010 while only 159,000 apartments were built, after the city sold more than 200,000 units of public housing in the '90s and 2000s.

A 2021 nonbinding referendum in which 59% of voters backed expropriating landlords with more than 3,000 units, covering more than 200,000 apartments, has gone unimplemented by two successive governments. Left Party candidate Elif Eralp, polling around 21%, has pledged to enforce it, but would need a coalition with the Greens, who support expropriation, and likely the Social Democrats, who oppose it.

A 2020 city rent cap was struck down by Germany's federal constitutional court in 2021 for conflicting with federal law, and landlords were then allowed to collect back rent from renters. Residents describe apartment hunts involving dozens of applications and 60-minute response windows just to get in line.

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