Much ado about the least (nd-aktuell.de)

Likes to present himself as a go-getter: Building Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) has launched a moratorium on dismissals that hardly changes anything.

Likes to present himself as a go-getter: Building Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) has launched a moratorium on dismissals that hardly changes anything.

Likes to present himself as a go-getter: Building Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) has launched a moratorium on dismissals that hardly changes anything.

Photo: dpa/Annette Riedl

The Berlin Senate passed a moratorium on layoffs on Tuesday. Tenants who are unable to pay their rent in full or on time due to the rise in energy prices should now be protected from being evicted – provided they live with one of the state-owned housing associations. The measure had been announced for a long time. On Tuesday, Senator for Building Andreas Geisel (SPD) declared the moratorium as part of the state’s relief package to be a done deal at the Senate press conference.

State-owned and Berlinovo together, the moratorium affects 360,000 apartments and around 700,000 tenants. They should not get into trouble over a period of six months due to any rent arrears. “Accommodating solutions are then found, such as deferrals or installment payments,” says Geisel. Rent waiver is also an option. Geisel cannot specify which form of relief is suitable for whom, i.e. who is left with debts and who is not.

It is also unclear how a refund will actually work. That depends on the development of the hardship fund as part of the relief package, with the funds from which the outstanding bills would be covered. Geisel calculates: With an increase in ancillary costs of 570 euros per month and a default in ten percent of households, that makes 20 million euros that have to be paid. »But none of us can say how the price development is.«

In fact, since 2015 the housing companies in the public sector have been obliged by the Housing Supply Act to offer tenants an alternative housing option even if they are evicted – so in theory, tenants from state-owned companies do not end up on the street anyway. “If you take a closer look, it’s old wine in new bottles,” says Ulrike Hamann from the tenants’ association about the decision. At the same time, a similar moratorium from 2020 to September 2021 due to the corona pandemic did not work as promised: 98 occupied apartments were still vacated during this period, according to Hamann. A rent moratorium that prevents rent increases would really make sense.

Geisel himself admits that the decision does not mean a radical change: social solutions for rent arrears have been “practice for a long time”. After all, he emphasizes, the moratorium now also includes tradespeople who rent their premises from the state’s own. This is how the retail trade on the ground floor should be carried through the crisis, because: »Anyone who has gone bankrupt once is much more difficult to revive than to get them through six months.«

Above all, however, Geisel attaches great importance to the signaling effect of the measure. “Private landlords are expressly encouraged to follow our example,” says Geisel, specifically addressing members of the housing alliance. According to information from the magazine “Spiegel”, the alliance partner Vonovia would not have ruled out layoffs at the federal level, “but we are still having a conversation about Berlin”.

Geisel and his party colleague and governing mayor Franziska Giffey are hoping for an energy price cap anyway. “The bills that trigger existential concerns should not even be sent,” says Giffey and calls on the federal government to intervene quickly. Until then, with the moratorium on layoffs, Berlin would show that the country was serious.


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