Germany - Deutschland, but in English

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[–] ExtraJudgement@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago* (5 children)

As a leftist: The youngest people don't recall that is was the Berlin-"PDS/Linke" going all-in on neoliberal privatization with Wowereit's Berlin-SPD from 2002-2011. They sold off the biggest chunk of state-owned housing, slashed funding for building replacement units, and made zero effort to mitigate the obviously following rising rents via new housing until it was much too late.

I'm willing to extend the federal Linke a line of trust, since they haven't been in a government coalition, yet. The Berlin-Linke, however, I cannot trust to actually stand behind left policies - they have done too much of the exact opposite in the past.

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[–] kossa@feddit.org 3 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Yep, it's strange how parties "always" tend to do the wrong thing once they are in power. Like, I could understand, if they're like "welp, we cannot achieve what we wanted to do because of reasons, so we rather do nothing". But instead they're often doing the very opposite. Like the Greens when they were in the federal government from 1998-2005. They lament how our tax system is so unjust, and then you look at the last big tax reforms and think "wait a minute, that was your idea in the first place".

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[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 2 points 17 hours ago (1 child)

The German Greens have always been a party of those wealthy enough to afford lifestyle environmentalism and the lastest trends of feel good social justice.

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[–] Melchior@feddit.org 1 point 16 hours ago

Which makes them a rather interesting exception. As in they actually pass decent environmental laws and also do the social justice stuff which also serves rich people(like LGBTQ+ rights). So pretty close to what actually benefits the interests of their voters.

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[–] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 1 point 17 hours ago (1 child)

They didn't sell it for shits and giggles though. The Berlin CDU had a massive banking scandal which lead to billions missing in the public finances. The following administration then sold the housing, as you said.

It was not a good decision, but I'm not aware there were better options. I think they were all shit.

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[–] ExtraJudgement@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

It's true they weren't responsible for the situation they found themselves in, that's on the Berlin CDU - my wishes for whom might get me banned here.

However, as I noted, it's not just that they sold the units, it's the combination of that with doing nothing to combat the foreseeable rent increases.

Modernize the allowed housing development plans for land that had already been released for development? No.
Release enough more land for housing development? No.
At the very least reduce or speed up the bureaucratic overhead required for housing development? No.

All three options would have at least contributed to mitigating the situation and were achievable without straining the state budget - especially the second one might've even been a net contributor if handled smartly. They did none of them - and it's not like this is a case of hindsight 20/20, this was all known at the time.