zlacker

>>halduj+(OP)
It's almost like cities (or more specifically, voters in municipal elections) don't realize that the only sustainable way to reduce prices is by increasing supply: http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp.... We know what to do, we have the technology, and we only lack the political will to make it happen.

>>jselig+ec
Berlin is a poor city. In fact it's former mayor famously described it as "Poor but sexy". It doesn't have the liberty of increasing supply on it's own to a large extent. You also can't increase supply, no matter how much you want to, in the districts everyone wants to live in. Getting a place outside of it can be accomplished fairly easily.

>>DasIch+oe
It would be rather easy to increase supply of housing. Berlin is full of brown-field sites that could be stacked with housing.

1. Remove density and height restrictions (e.g. "Berliner Traufhoehe").

2. Remove unnecessarily strict building requirements (e.g. "Daemmungswahn").

3. Remove legislation that is too tenant-friendly (e.g. "Mietbremse").

All three serve as breaks to increasing housing supply, the first is a legal impediment, the other two reduce investments.

>>mafrib+af
The problem isn't supply, it's supply in Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Neukölln. If you want a place outside of these districts, you can get a place quite easily.

Increasing supply outside of them, which would be easy because Berlin is surrounded by land you could build on won't change that. At least not without billions of investments in public transport infrastructure, maybe.

Any regulation like building requirements is probably federal, I doubt Berlin has any extra regulation. So there is nothing Berlin can do here.

Removing regulation that is too tenant-friendly isn't popular with voters, it's not going to increase the supply of apartments for students and poor people. This kind of regulation including but not limited to the Mietpreisbremse is also federal law and not something Berlin can do all that much about.

>>DasIch+9h
There is no human right to rent a 100m2 flat in Mitte for €200 per month.

Even central Berlin is full of brown-field sites that could be developed -- Flughafen Tempelhof most prominently. If you go for Hong Kong style density there, a lot of housing problems would be solved ... Laws can easily be changed if there is political will at the local, regional or federal levels.

However, all this requires a bit of long-term thinking and planning, of which there is little evidence. Instead we get populist measures like "Mietpreisbremse" which hinder new developments.

>>mafrib+Nh
There may not be a no human right to cheap rent in Mitte but most voters probably agree that even people with low incomes should be able to live in the city. Also I think a good argument can be made that rent-seeking behavior by property owners can potentially be in conflict with the constitution.

Flughafen Tempelhof can't be developed, voters have voted directly against it. That law could be changed but to do so would arguably be undemocratic and it would certainly be political suicide for the forseeable future. This also brings up the important point of city planning, cities are more than just housing. You need to take that into consideration.

Also indeed increasing supply is about long-term thinking. You can't increase supply very fast and in this instance you can't increase it fast enough. This means you need something to slow down price increases in the short-term which measures like the Mietpreisbremse or banning AirBnB do.