What to do when the house is sold – and in the letter, the termination box of a sudden? In Berlin-Kreuzberg tenants are fighting back with an unusual action against speculation with apartments.
the cart rolls Friedrich Schindler and his comrades-in-arms, the self-made man high wall on the sidewalk. Your destination: the neighboring house with the number 14 in the cross-Berger Arndt road. As shortly before, in front of your house, you may also insert here a movable wall. The sidewalk on the information zone.
the house has several times changed owners
On the panel, the readers learn that the house with the number 14 has changed in the last few years the owner. And that in 2018 social-stabilized apartments will be condos sold. According to the wall apartments in the house are still in the coveted neighborhood empty.
It doesn’t take long until the first passers-by stop, read and about to start a conversation. That is the objective of the initiators: “We want to shake the people awake. Many have not yet woken up,” says the 67-year-old Schindler.
With movable walls to make Friedrich Schindler on the Problem of housing speculation carefully.
“Now You’re suddenly on the outside!”
Since 1976, he lives in the house on the Chamisso-Platz in Berlin-Kreuzberg for rent. He still vividly remembers the feeling that came with the notice: “We were thunderstruck. I had the feeling: Now, you’re suddenly outside. You need to get away from your neighborhood,” says Schindler. “We felt really safe. Also because our house has changed owners several times and so far never happened. We thought, we can live here.”
In circle of friends, he always hear such stories: the building is sold and the new owner may terminate the lease because of own need. Many fear to be a victim of real estate speculation.
Fight back – but how?
Schindler wanted to take thicket of light into the Investors, and took other houses in your sights: “Who are the buyers?”, he asked. And not only that, he asks the increasingly in the neighborhood. Together with other Concerned, he decided to investigate.
However, the gathering of the information was hard work. Because often it is not easy to determine the true owner of the sold homes and their plans, says Schindler. For that you would need, among other things, to the aid of the respective tenants, of which, however, many of the consequences of the new owners fear.
