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Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by izacus on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:27AM (#16929620)
1-2 million refugees are a tiny blip on German population and most of them came nowhere near Berlin. Poor people can't raise rents, the exploding tech sector and Berlin as a place for high-paid techies to move to has probably more to do with it.
Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by dagw on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:34AM (#16929662)
Poor people can't raise rents

The poor people in many cases aren't paying the rents directly. The local governments are renting places at or above market rates to house poor people.

But on the whole the rising rents in Berlin is more due to the influx of European tech workers and the like, rather than refugees.

Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by majewsky on Thursday April 26, 2018 @05:42AM (#16930377)
Another huge reason is that Germany has curbed its subsidized housing program since the early 90s. Every year, hundreds of thousands of apartments fall out of fixed price agreements, but only very few new subsidized housing is built.

(Subsidized housing as in: The government subsidizes your housing project if you agree to fixed rents for a certain period of time, afaik 20 years or so.)

Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by lopmotr on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:44AM (#16929733)
It's not a blip, it's 2% of the entire population. No matter how poor they are, if they live in a house, they're pushing rents up by reducing available houses for everybody else. Some of those displaced people or the people they subsequently displace by moving will surely end up in Berlin because that'll be the next best option for them.
Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by mantas on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:28AM (#16929630)
Poor people can raise rents when they're getting government subsidies.
Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by JanSt on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:31AM (#16929648)
It's happening all over Germany. They are getting the apartments paid by the state, so high rents are being paid for them. 1-2 million is a huge number of people if you're lacking living space. Where to put them?
Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by maephisto on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:47AM (#16929758)
Talking strictly about Berlin, most of the EU migrants coming in here fall in two categories:

- highly skilled workers (IT, Finance, Sales, Marketing) that earn much more than average german folk, and compete for housing with upper class berliners

- unskilled workers (constructions) that live usually in temp housing and don't attempt to rent a flat for themselves.

As for the refugees, most of them still live in camps distributed across Germany and if they get a flat subsidised by the state it will be in some low demand neighbourhood.

Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by rjtavares on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:38AM (#16929681)
It's happening all over Europe. We have very low influx of refugees/poor immigrants in Portugal, but rents in Lisbon/Porto are skyrocketing.
Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by Malarkey73 on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:51AM (#16929792)
ditto the UK. Took virtually no refugees but rents still increasing ... hmmm something wrong with this theory?

Seriously though in the UK we have had immigration over the last 20 years and that must have led to higher demand and prices. Best estimates are about 20% in 20 years in England.

https://fullfact.org/immigration/have-house-prices-risen-bec...

BUT

English house prices have risen by 320% on average over this period.

Other factors are - getting married later, more single people, more divorced couples, and financialisation of housing.

Probably a similar story in Berlin.

Re:Berlin now home to soaring rents and rising tensions by ccozan on Thursday April 26, 2018 @04:31AM (#16930050)
Munich is very simptomatic of this "singles" issues. More than half of the people there are singles, thus the housing need is quite high.

However, since the cheap money from the banks, more people are orienting to buy than rent, which is quite different from the past.