SPD property spokesman Kühnert in feisty defence of rent cap policy

One of the highlights of the Qu Vadis conference held in Berlin in early February was undoubtedly the sit down interview between inquisitor, the always excellent Karsten Trompetter, and Kevin Kühnert, the deputy head of the SPD party and head of its junior division, the JuSos, or Young Socialists. 

Kühnert is seen very much as a potential future leader of the party, and has a prominence in national media that belies his youthfulness and apparent lack of practical experience.

Trompetter, who acted as master of ceremonies for the two day event, is both a formidable showman and a highly competent moderator – one of the best in Germany, if not THE best, at hosting a prestigious event like Heuer Dialog’s flagship event, the annual Quo Vadis in the Adlon Hotel in Berlin.  

A Quo Vadis moderator requires a deft hand in swiftly moving the event along from one presentation to the next, while providing continuity with his own insights and commentary on speakers’ content. As a dyed-in-the-wool real estate man himself, Trompetter has the know-how and sensitivity to handle the unexpected – which at a high-profile event like the Quo Vadis is an occupational hazard, and almost certainly to be expected. Demonstrators protesting outside against the presence of the heartless real estate capitalists convening inside Berlin’s Adlon, the grande dame of the capital’s hotels, is the least of it.

But he’s also top-notch at winkling out the truth – and certainly the authentic – in his interview subjects, leaving them little room to hide behind platitudes and empty phrases. His audience want to know more from the subject of Trompetter’s grilling, and he rarely fails to deliver. His interview with Kevin Kühnert was a case in point, and both participants gave as good as they got.

While FDP leader Christian Lindner had to make his apologies as keynote speaker, and failed to show because of the political turmoil in Berlin as a result of the electoral debacle in Thuringia, Kühnert kept the flag flying for the political classes. In front of nearly 400 delegates, representing the Bundesliga of the German real estate industry, Kühnert, a college dropout with no official qualifications in a country which reveres educational certification,  defended the introduction of the Mietendeckel or rent cap in Berlin, which has since come into effect. 

However, he strongly criticised the building and housing policies of Katrin Lompscher of the hard left party Die Linke, as responsible minister in the ruling red-red-green Berlin Senate. “We cannot condone the approach taken by Frau Lompscher. I’m not here as her lawyer, but I am strongly of the opinion that she is acting much too slowly on the issue of new housing construction”, he said.

He attacked the real estate industry for showing a lack of conscience on what he and his party view as a key social issue – the right to affordable housing. In his view it’s immoral for landlords to earn excessively on the renting of accommodation. “I don’t believe it’s a legitimate business model to earn one’s living by renting out accommodation to other human beings” would be his essential opening position, put forward in several debates on the housing issue. 

He goes further, saying that ownership of property, if allowed at all, should extend to - at most - the amount of living space that an individual requires for his own living needs. In other words, all property should be essentially nationalised.

“The real estate industry has to understand that it carries a greater responsibility than other branches of industry, because it’s not selling toasters, but the roofs over people’s heads”, he argued.

Pressed by Trompetter as to what law he would change if he had the power, Kühnert said he had many ideas, but the first thing he would do would be to abolish the tax-free sale of housing. Among other serious responses to Trompetter’s persistent questioning of his principles, Kühnert managed to get in several well-timed and even humorous side-swipes at the assembled titans of industry and their capitalist aspirations. 

Still, Kühnert’s approach to housing ownership inevitably brought up the question of what happened when this had been, in fact, public policy. As it was, in the old East Germany, where the official state policy was state ownership and a rent cap.

This resulted in a housing market in 1989 with the following characteristics: 65% of all apartments, including the 3.2 million units built in the post-war period, that were heated with coal, 24% without a separate toilet, 18% without a separate bathroom, 40% of which were considered in negligent condition, while 11% were uninhabitable.

Apart from this, the housing market as it was exposed after the fall of the Berlin Wall was so desolate that over 200 old East German city centres were considered almost ripe for the wrecking-ball. It took years for East Germans to be allocated even one of the numerous prefabricated apartments (Plattenbauten). The building substance of most older properties in the multifamily houses in the biggest Eastern German cities was so poor that it took a multi-billion tax-free subsidisation scheme for years to bring the properties back up to habitable condition 

The experience of going several rounds in the ring with Trompetter won’t have harmed Kühnert’s spirit in the least. On the contrary, in fact. Since just prior to the Quo Vadis event, Kühnert has taken over the mantle of being the SPD’s spokesman on housing and real estate, for which he said he would have to further extensively brief himself.

He’ll examine his views again himself in depth given his new responsibilities, he acknowledged, but in principle they remain not unknown to the broad German public, in the light of his numerous appearances on talk-show TV.

He departed the ring to a well-earned round of applause from the assembled throng, few of whom would have shared his political convictions, but who were nonetheless impressed by his steadfastness and apparent integrity. If his party holds on to a share of power at a national level in the next elections, they’ll be seeing quite a lot more of him in the years to come.