quinta-feira, 24 de setembro de 2015

The housing trap: how can Berlin avoid following in London's pricey footsteps?

“we don’t want a situation like in London”.

The housing trap: how can Berlin avoid following in London's pricey footsteps?
Though comparatively cheap next to London’s astronomical living costs, Berlin’s rental prices are rising rapidly. What does this mean for the native Berliners and ex-Londoners who rely on its reasonable housing market?

Johanna Kamradt in Berlin
Wednesday 23 September 2015 12.23 BST

When speaking to former Londoners who have made the move to Germany’s capital, one comparison keeps cropping up: living in Berlin feels like East London did more than a decade ago, before Shoreditch was polished and Hackney became unaffordable.

Amid the steady influx of Brits moving to Berlin (the current total is nearing 14,000), there is a growing bond between these two capital cities. Foodie events by former Londoners are becoming increasingly popular in Berlin, a new LSE Cities report highlights the cities’ shared (and growing) preference for cycling and walking over car ownership and Berlin is now said to be rivalling London as Europe’s startup capital.

But on one matter, Berlin is clearly concerned about any comparisons made between the two cities: housing. Indeed, the manager of the Berlin Tenants’ Association, Reiner Wild, told the Guardian recently that the city’s new rent cap was put in place precisely because “we don’t want a situation like in London”.

Ruth Barry has been living in Berlin for just under a year, after becoming increasingly frustrated in London. In Berlin, she’s able to focus on her business full-time, making a larger profit that she did in Britain. “London makes you work for your place there,” she says. “If you don’t make it, someone else will take that place.”

While Londoners are living in an ever-expanding bubble of housing-price stress (in the first half of 2014, nearly 60,000 Londoners in their 30s left the city: the highest number since 2008), one still hears a lot about Berlin being comparatively cheap. Unusually for a national capital, the cost of living in Berling is still lower than in seven other major German cities, including Munich, Hamburg and Frankfurt. Yet Berlin’s rental prices are now rising at nearly twice the national average rate.

Falk Weiss, a photographer, has been living in Berlin for over 40 years. He enjoys the influx of people from surrounding countries moving to Berlin, but says he is worried about the rising rental prices. “People moving here from other large cities rent flats in ‘hip’ areas for prices that seem very cheap to them – but for us locals, it’s expensive. We just think: ‘You poor sods, it must be so expensive where you’re from if you think these prices are cheap.’”

In London, that’s especially true: the monthly sq m price for renting a “prime central London apartment” now ranges from £51 to £64, while in Berlin, the average sq m rental price is less than €10.50 (£7.50). While London tenants reportedly spend 72% of their earnings on rent, Berliners pay out just over 20%.

“It’s unhelpful to make comparisons with London rents, because prices are relative to the German rental economy,” says Hannah Gregory, who moved to Berlin from London seven months ago. She and her partner viewed 30 flats and put in 10 applications before finding their current apartment. “For long-time Berlin residents, rents are now becoming unaffordable too.”

Gregory believes there has been a change in attitude towards people who have recently moved to the city: “There is this ‘Du bist kein Berliner’ [You are not a Berliner] movement, which seems to come from a Leftist, anti-gentrification statement, but actually feels highly exclusionary.
You see ‘Refugees Welcome’ graffiti alongside anti-gentrification graffiti.”
Paul Sullivan, a photographer and writer, who runs slowtravelberlin.com, moved from London to Berlin more than six years ago – and says the impact on his lifestyle has been profound. “London gradually started to feel like an overpriced city full of overworked people – I realised I was on a treadmill. Living in Berlin has enabled me to build a lifestyle that’s much closer to my ideal than I could have ever had in the UK.”

Sullivan believes the German capital’s efforts to avoid falling into “the London trap” are laudable – and largely effective. “[The] main flow of social and political news between my British friends and I tends to show Germany in a much more progressive light, whether it’s forcing landlords to adhere to rent caps, holding public referendums on vast swathes of potential real estate or prompting more women into corporate boardrooms. Germany is far from perfect, but watching the UK from a distance over the last few years has been a bit like watching a slow-motion car crash.”

“Berlin has no financial sector to speak of, no super-rich areas, and I hope it won’t ever be as attractive as a luxury investment object,” says translator Katy Derbyshire, who has been living in Berlin for 19 years. “But I’m starting to hear stories about buildings where many of the flats are uninhabited second homes, especially in the East, where a lot of public housing was sold off a few years ago.”

Nevertheless, her recollections of why she left London suggest she still feels Berlin is a much more pleasant city to reside in. “John Major had just introduced the Criminal Justice Act and the UK felt like a very joyless place to be, where protest and parties were being criminalised.”

As a single parent in Berlin, Derbyshire is able to rent a centrally located flat and work in a job she loves. She is now applying for German citizenship. How does she feel about London, after having lived in Berlin for nearly two decades?

“I worry about how government policy will affect my sister’s life – she works part-time because she has a disability, and I’m scared she won’t be able to pay the rent if her tax credits are cut. She and her daughter couldn’t move out of London because that’s where her job is, and she couldn’t travel long distances because of her disability.

“London does seem to be becoming increasingly uncaring – a place where money counts more than people’s lives, and where housing is a way to make money rather than provide people with homes.”


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