No Obligation Towards Leaseholding Tenants

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During a recent interview with German radio with a member of KOL, the journalist assumed that tenants whose houses are privatized get replacement housing.  The answer to this may have not been clear. Given the fact that foreigners may assume the city gives replacement housing to such tenants, a clarification should be made.

When a house is privatized, usually by being given to an heir to a former owner or somebody who has purchased the claim, (or come by it by fraudulent means), the lease is transferred and the city no longer considers itself a party in the matter.  This means, if a tenant wants to get into municipal housing, s/he must reapply – even if s/he has been a municipal tenant for decades.

What that means is the tenant must qualify according to income and then compete with thousands of others who are also waiting for housing in a situation where the amount of available housing is decreasing rapidly, due to privatization, sales and condemning buildings.

This is why although many, many families qualify for municipal housing, only 2.5 % of families whose homes were privatized got this. AND, it should be added, this is possible only because of struggles to speed up the process for such people.

We have challenged the city on this many times, saying that they have a responsibility towards their tenants. But they categorically deny this and, after we made a legal analysis of the situation, they got their own legal opinions. And the legal opinions of those in power are rarely questioned.