2.1 / Berlin
A sea of demonstrators that could not be overlooked. Year after year, the already famous Berlin tenants' demos are increasingly a must for the majority of Berliners. Here, the film encounters the city's protagonists. "Deutsche Wohnen, we are not your truffle pigs," reads the sandwich board of an elderly lady named Marlies Reimann. She’s been in her flat for 43 years. Since the company took over her house, the rent has doubled, she says.
2.1.1 / Berlin / Marlies
Pankow, in Eastern Berlin. 4-storey apartment blocks from the 1920s painted in warm yellow. Marlies Reimann stands in front of her ground-floor flat and calls to her cat. "Sternchen" comes and follows her into the courtyard. An aeroplane roars low overhead. The planes are welcome, Marlies says, as protection against ever more frequent rent rises. A neighbour joins her: she has lived here since 1948, but does not know how long she will be able to pay the rising rent with her pension, meanwhile "Deutsche Wohnen" is letting everything rot.
In Marlies' two-room flat we learn that it was her first. She used to work as a waitress, but she is too old for that now. Now she has a so-called “one-euro job” in a school library. She likes her work and is popular there. She receives social welfare. But the social welfare office is no longer willing to pay the rising rents. But she’s not leaving. If she does, it’ll be feet first!
2.1.2 / Berlin / "This is our house"
The tenants of Schöneweider Straße 20 in Neukölln sing at the tenants' demonstration: "This is our house, fuck the return on investment, our pension is not enough". Their house, with two day-care centres and 40 tenants, is to be sold. The owners themselves grew up here and founded the day-care centres. An appeal to their alternative past life was of no avail in view of the prospect of a big profit, says one resident.
Visiting the courtyard party. The residents report that the threat to their tenancies brought them together. Friendships were formed, musicians met and connected. The house band plays "Our house is our home", Jan and Elisabeth -- a duo well-known in Berlin -- sing "The dream is over, but we will give it our all". Even the local mayor Martin Hikel is there. The city has a preemptive right in milieu protection areas like this one - but only at the price offered by the investor. The mayor waves it away. The real estate company's offer exceeded all affordable limits. Alternatively, he offers a so-called exemption agreement between district and buyer. This could, for example, restrict luxury renovations and rent increases. What is then eventually agreed, however, is beyond the tenants' control.
2.1.3 / Berlin / Railway flats
Berlin Neukölln, Tellstraße. These houses once had flats for railway workers. In the early 2000s, in the course of the planned railway privatization, the German government sold over a hundred thousand flats to Deutsche Annington. After also taking over company housing from EON, RWE and BIG Heimbau, Vonovia has become Europe's largest housing group. The group's strategy is called "energy-efficient modernization". This makes it possible to circumvent the nationwide rent brake. Gustel Pawlitschek from Tellstraße knows a thing or two about it. First a new heating system, then new windows, then a new bathroom, and each time lots of dust and noise. And then at the end of it all, an increase in rent, which has in the meantime more than doubled to 207%. She can only cope with this by tapping into her funeral reserves. Now Gustl is putting her hopes on the rent cap.
2.1.4 / Berlin / Rent cap
From 23 November 2020, the controversial rent cap, the so-called ban on excessive rents, will apply in Berlin. Rents will be frozen retroactively to a cut-off date of June 2019. There are exceptions, but even these will be capped at 20% above the rent ceiling. Such strict rent regulation has not existed here since 1990. Burkhard Dregger, the parliamentary party leader of the Berlin CDU, is now appealing against the rent cap to the Federal Constitutional Court. The decision is expected in May 2021. 2021. Sebastian Scheel, Berlin's building senator, is eagerly awaiting it. But even if the court overturns the rent cap, a new law will again strictly regulate Berlin's rents in compliance with the limits set -- and conflict is pre-programmed.
In an expert presentation, Vonovia promises an average rent increase rate of 4.4% per year from 2021 onwards through modernization. So far, this has only been 4.2% - but in 20 years of Vonovia, it amounts to a 228% rent increase! Rolf Buch, the company's CEO, is proud. He expects a profit of €1.32 billion for 2020 - an increase in profits despite adverse conditions. The rent cap had slowed down rent rises for Berlin flats to 0.8%. For a third of tenants, rents would even have to be reduced. But Buch hopes that the Federal Constitutional Court will throw the restriction out: "Putting a cap on rents is the same as reducing the price of bread when there is a shortage of bread." But no shareholder should be worried, Buch says -- a record dividend will be paid out.