Private property being
confiscated
Germany Confiscating Homes
to Use for Migrants "A
massive attack on the property rights" by Soeren Kern 5/14/17
In an unprecedented move, Hamburg
authorities confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the
city center. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties
and will rent them against the will of the owner to tenants chosen by the city.
District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be
billed to the owner of the properties.
Similar expropriation measures have been
proposed in Berlin, the German capital, but abandoned because they were deemed
unconstitutional.
Some Germans are asking what is next:
Will authorities now limit the maximum amount of living space per person, and
force those with large apartments to share them with strangers?
Authorities in Hamburg, the
second-largest city in Germany, have begun confiscating private dwellings to
ease a housing shortage — one that has been acutely exacerbated by Chancellor
Angela Merkel's decision to allow more than two million migrants into the
country in recent years.
City officials have been seizing
commercial properties and converting them into migrant shelters since late
2015, when Merkel opened German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants
from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Now, however, the city is expropriating
residential property units owned by private citizens.
In an unprecedented move, Hamburg
authorities recently confiscated six residential units in the Hamm
district near the city center. The units, which are owned by a private
landlord, are in need of repair and have been vacant since 2012. A trustee
appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them against
the will of the owner to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman
Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed
to the owner of the properties.
The expropriation is authorized by the
Hamburg Housing Protection Act (Hamburger
Wohnraumschutzgesetz), a 1982 law that was updated by the city's Socialist government in
May 2013 to enable the city to seize any residential property unit that has
been vacant for more than four months.
The forced lease, the first of its kind
in Germany, is said to be aimed at pressuring the owners of other vacant
residences in the city to make them available for rent. Of the 700,000 rental
units in Hamburg, somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 (less than one percent) are
believed to be vacant,
according an estimate by the Hamburg Senate.
Socialists and Greens in Hamburg
recently established a
"hotline" where local residents can report vacant properties. Activists have also created a website —Leerstandsmelder (Vacancy
Reporter) — to identify unoccupied real estate in Hamburg and other German
cities. It remains unclear why the landlord
in Hamm left his apartments vacant for more than five years. Some have posited
that, given the location of the properties, the renovation costs may have been
too high and probably would not have been offset by the rental income.
Others are blaming city officials
for not approving more building permits to allow for the construction of new
residential units. A study conducted in 2012 well before the migrant crisis
reached epic proportions forecast that
by 2017, Hamburg would have a deficit of at least 50,000 rental properties.
In 2016, however, only 2,433 new
residential units came onto the market, while only 2,290 new building permits
were approved, according to
statistics provided by the City of Hamburg. These numbers were up slightly from
2,192 new units and 2,041 new permit approvals in 2015.
In 2012, Hamburg's Socialist
government presented a
plan to build 6,000 new residential units per year. The plan never
materialized, however, because prospective builders were constricted by
government-imposed rental caps which would have made it impossible for them to
even recover their construction costs.
Since then, the city has turned to
seizing private property to resolve its self-inflicted housing crisis.
On October 1, 2015, the Hamburg
Parliament (Hamburgische Bürgerschaft) approved a
new law that allows the city to seize vacant commercial real estate (office
buildings, retail space and land) and use it to house migrants.
City officials said the measure was
necessary because, at the time, more than 400 new migrants were arriving in
Hamburg each day and all the existing refugee shelters were full. They said
that because the owners of vacant real estate refused to make their property
available to the city on a voluntary basis, the city should be given the right
to take it by force.
The measure was applauded by those
on the left of the political spectrum. "We are doing everything we can to
ensure that the refugees are not homeless during the coming winter," said Senator
Till Steffen of the Green Party. "For this reason, we need to use vacant
commercial properties."
Others have argued that efforts by
the state to seize private property are autocratic and reek of Communism.
"The proposed confiscation of private land and buildings is a massive
attack on the property rights of the citizens of Hamburg," said André
Trepoll of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). "It amounts
to an expropriation by the state." He said the proposed measure is a
"law of intimidation" that amounts to a "political dam-break
with far-reaching implications." He added: "The ends do not justify
any and all means."
Katja Suding, the leader of the Free
Democrats (FDP) in Hamburg, said that
the proposed law is an "unacceptable crossing of red lines... Such
coercive measures will only fuel resentment against refugees."
Similar expropriation measures have
been proposed in Berlin, the German capital, but abandoned because they were
deemed unconstitutional.
In November 2015, lawmakers in
Berlin considered emergency legislation that would have allowed local authorities
to seize private residences to accommodate asylum seekers. The proposal would
have authorized police forcibly to enter private homes and apartments without a
warrant to determine their suitability as housing for refugees and migrants.
The legislation, proposed by
Berlin Mayor Michael Müller of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), would
have amended Section 36 of Berlin's Public Order and Safety Law (Allgemeine Gesetz zum Schutz der
öffentlichen Sicherheit und Ordnung, ASOG), which currently allows
police to enter private residences only in extreme instances, to "avert
acute threats," that is, to fight serious crime. Müller wanted to expand
the scope for warrantless inspections to include "preventing
homelessness."
The proposal was kept secret from
the public until the leader of the Free Democrats (FDP) in Berlin, Sebastian
Czaja, warned the
measure would violate the German constitution. He said:
"The plans of the Berlin Senate
to requisition residential and commercial property without the consent of the
owner to accommodate refugees is an open breach of the constitution. The
attempt by the Senate to undermine the constitutional right to property and the
inviolability of the home must be resolutely opposed." Since then, both the mayor's office
and the Senate appear to have abandoned their plans.
Following an investigation, Gunnar
Schupelius, a columnist with the Berlin newspaper BZ, wrote: "A strange report made the
rounds at the weekend: The Senate would authorize the police to enter private
homes to house refugees, even against the will of the owner. I thought it was
only satire, then a misunderstanding, because the Basic Law, Article 13,
states: 'The home is inviolable.'
"So I went on a search for the
source of this strange report and found it. There is a 'proposal' which the
Senate Chancellery (Senatskanzlei)
has apparently circulated among the senators. The Senate Chancellery is another
name for the mayor's office. The permanent secretary is Björn Böhning (SPD)...
"The proposal is clear: The
police can enter private property without a court order in order to search for
housing for refugees when these are threatened with homelessness. You can do
that 'without the consent of the owner.' And not only should the police be
allowed to do this, but also the regulatory agencies.
"This delicate 'proposal'
attracted little public attention. Only Berlin FDP General Secretary Sebastian
Czaja spoke up and warned of an 'open preparation for breach of the
constitution.' Internally, there should have been protests. The 'proposal'
suddenly disappeared from the table. Is it completely gone or will it
return?"
It remains unclear why no one has
challenged the constitutionality of Hamburg's expropriation law. Meanwhile, some Germans are asking
what is next: Will authorities now limit the maximum amount of living space per
person, and force those with large apartments to share them with strangers?
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