• Lights out for the Kurfürstenstraße sex strip?
    https://www.exberliner.com/berlin/lights-out-for-kurfurstenstrase-sex-strip

    21.1.2022 by Graham Anderson - Is Kurfürstenstraße about to lose its infamous reputation?

    It’s just after 4 pm, and the bleak November night as darkness falls. Here on a corner of Kurfürstenstraße, two worlds are about to collide. Pupils from the French primary school Voltaire, vagrants and mosque-goers, white collar workers on their Feierabend mingle on the bustling street …But then as night closes in, groups of girls appear seemingly out of nowhere in front of the notorious Love-Sex-Dreams sex shop, and Kurfürstenstraße becomes the sex strip it’s famed for.

    Local authorities lifted Kurfürstenstraße’s Corona curfew on Berlin’s century-old red-light hotspot last August. Since then, Eastern European sex workers, underworld pimps, druggies, pickpockets and deranged freaks have returned to find their old haunts gentrified. Previously bombed-out, vacant blocks now boast six-storey, luxury apartments.

    Meanwhile construction sites and security fences have closed off formerly condemned buildings and restricted access to much of the strip. Despite the change of scenery, they’re all back: women prowling the streets, pimps loitering in the doorways, potential customers nervously casting their eye over their options.

    The locals

    Kurfürstenstraße’s old hands and Multikulti shop owners shrug their shoulders at the street’s overnight renaissance. However this isn’t the case for the upmarket newcomers. Many moved in completely oblivious to its colourful reputation, and they’re outraged at the prostitutes and pimps invading their expensive idyll. They’re pinning their hopes on local women’s rights non-profit Terre Des Femmes and its fight to introduce Swedish-style prostitution laws in Germany.

    Under this model, punters face stiff fines and a criminal record for paying for sexual services, while sex workers are retrained for “normal” jobs. Pimps’ incomes from female sexploitation dry up overnight, as do the human traffickers’ multimillion-euro businesses. If the law was to be introduced in Germany, it would mean curtains for Kurfürstenstraße’s hedonistic heyday.
    Image for Lights out for the Kurfürstenstraße sex strip?

    Love-Sex-Dreams. Image: Christine Kunert

    However not all the cashed-up newcomers are turned off by the street’s kinky charms. “It’s not so much the sex strip that concerns me but the crime that comes with it,” says a middle-aged female resident of the plush Voltaire Apartments. “The rents are sky-high. Fortunately, we haven’t had any rough sleepers ringing bells and camping in the foyers yet. Nor have the doorways been used as public toilets like elsewhere in the street,” she adds. A two-metre tall German giant clambers into his Mercedes. “I don’t care about what goes on in the street. It all happens at night anyway,” he laughs. Indifference rules here on Kurfürstenstraße.

    The sex workers

    Hungarian sex worker Katalin has been hooking Kurfürstenstraße’s car and footpath punters for three years. “The Arabs and Afghanis are the real problem. They ask over and over again for the prices. They get aggressive when I don’t reply,” says the twenty-something. “A blowjob costs €30, sex with a condom €40, and sex and a blowjob €50. Love-Sex-Dreams sex shop charges €5 for a cabin, which are about one metre by one metre. Everyone just uses them for sex.”

    Katalin usually whisks car-bound punters off for a quickie in the car park opposite Hübner’s furniture store, about 150 metres away in Genthiner Straße. Sometimes she’ll even take them inside a suspiciously parked bus. A 1950s design, the big green vehicle with no windows is occasionally found in the corner of the car-park, and made available for the ladies. Indeed, churchgoers outside Kurfürstenstraße’s Twelve Apostles Lutheran Church pretend not to notice. Katalin charges punters an extra €20 for sex in nearby Bülowstraße’s hourly hotel.

    Although the scene really comes alive after dark, Kurfürstenstraße’s sex strip runs non-stop, with ladies loitering around Love-Sex-Dream’s heated foyer 24/7. Whether it’s a stress-relieving quicky at 5am on the way to work, or a blow-job during lunch break, there are always options available.

    Despite it all, optimism thrives on Kurfürstenstraße. Two older, plumper, far-gone beauties from Romania follow a pedestrian. “Hast du Lust? Hast du Lust? Ein Dreier mit uns?” (Do you feel like it? Do you feel like it? A three- some with us?)

    A turf war breaks out on the corner of Kurfürstenstraße and Frobenstraße after a hefty Hungarian lady stakes her claim on a young German redhead’s corner patch. Tempers flare. The redhead kicks her rival’s legs out from underneath her; the Hungarian thuds onto the footpath, winded. The slim redhead’s an experienced street-fighter. Onlookers moan at the quick end to the brawl between boardwalk brides. “I had to put her out of action,” says the redhead.

    Religious intervention

    It isn’t only the sex workers and residents who are drawn into street’s sex scene. Kurfürstenstraße’s Twelve Apostles Church takes centre stage in Berlin’s red-light roadshow, particularly following Tempelhof-Schöneberg Council’s decision to build a slap-up wooden toilet in front of the church. Here, ladies and punters file in and out of their altar for round-the-clock rituals of quickies, shooting up and calls of nature.
    Image for Lights out for the Kurfürstenstraße sex strip?

    Twelve Apostles Church. Image: Christine Kunert

    Pastor Burkhard Bornemann strolls through his red-light flock every day tending to Kurfürstenstraße’s fallen angels. For many, faith in God and drugs gets them through their nocturnal sexcapades. Bornemann’s “Wednesday Initiative” hands out food parcels and spiritual guidance – key forms of sustenance, no doubt – but he argues that more needs to be done to address the problems he sees on the street.

    “Politicians on both sides of the fence dodge the issue of banning Kurfürstenstraße’s sex strip. It’s too hot for them. A ban would certainly allow us to get back to tending tourists’ and parishioners’ spiritual needs,” says the 57-year-old, Berlin-born preacher. He’s right. Tempelhof Schöneberg’s recently appointed mayor Jörn Oltmann (the Greens) has long resisted banning Kurfürstenstraße’s sex trade.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bornemann isn’t the only local religious figure calling for action. About 150 metres up the road and on the other side of the street, 400 Muslim faithful stream out of Semerkand Mosque after Friday prayers – where they are welcomed by Kurfürstenstraße’s streams of sex workers. “It’s a very unpleasant situation for us,” says mosque spokesman Ömer Burak, 24. “We have children and teenagers coming here. They’re exposed to the streetwalkers. It’s even more unpleasant when we have high-ranking visitors. The mosque would definitely support a ban on street prostitution in Kurfürstenstraße.”

    Inspector Wolff’s approach

    A first-hand witness to some of the problems associated with the strip is chief inspector Ingo Wolff, who fronts the Berlin Police’s Crime Prevention Squad in the area. “Kurfürstenstraße is a microcosm of Berlin’s crime scene. Prostitution, human trafficking, drugs, violence, theft – the street has everything,” he says.

    Highlighting the darker side of the sex trade, in 2018 Berlin Police investigated 156 cases of human trafficking, most of them within the city’s thriving sex industry. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, according to Wolff. “Tracing pimps’ incomes and securing a conviction verges on a Mission Impossible. We have to prove that over 50 percent of their income comes from prostitution,” he says.

    To help protect sex workers from some of the dangers of the industry, Wolff and his crew take a cooperative approach. “We work with the girls, not against them. We’re their friends,” says the mild-mannered 50-year-old. Indeed, young, happy-looking Romanian streetwalkers frolic in front of the Twelve Apostles Church, paying scant attention to and completely unperturbed by Wolff’s weekly Friday info stand, which sits just in front of the huge, brown Backstein building.

    “It’s legal for them to work in front of the church. But a quickie in public is definitely out. They can use the portable toilet in front of the church for that,” Wolff says. “The Voltaire primary school calls us when the girls stray up to the children’s playground. We then call the social workers from Frauentreff Olga to haul them back and tell them it’s not on.” Softly, softly. In words and action.

    And despite being on the frontline of the fight against sex industry-related criminality, Wolff gives the thumbs down to Sweden-style prostitution laws. “Kurfürstenstraße’s sex strip is a Berlin institution. It’s been here for over a hundred years. I can’t see it being banned. A ban would make the situation worse because we would lose contact with the girls and pimps. Criminalising punters and retraining streetwalkers has a bad taste for us, especially with Germany’s dark past from 1933-1945,” says Wolff.

    Olga’s safe house

    The police aren’t the only ones looking after the Kurfürstenstraße girls, though. Just a few doors up from the mosque, streetwalkers mill around the front of Frauentreff Olga, a support centre for sex workers. Olga’s social workers provide counselling, hygiene articles, meals, condoms, needles and a safe place to sleep for those working the street.
    Image for Lights out for the Kurfürstenstraße sex strip?

    Frauentreff Olga is a support centre for sex workers. Image: Christine Kunert

    “Few women ever get out of the scene. They hardly ever rat on their pimps – out of fear,” says Olga social worker Lonneke Schmidt-Bink, 47. “Unfortunately, plans to get the girls off the street by converting the Love-Sex-Dreams sex complex into a four-storey, walk-through love house fell through when the owner sold the building. He was all for it, but the new owner plans to flatten the building.”

    Echoing Wolff’s sentiment, Schmidt-Bink believes that prohibiting sex work would do more harm than good. “Banning Kurfürstenstraße’s sex strip would simply move it to freeway entrances. Or force it underground. That means we wouldn’t be able to reach the sex workers in need of help.”

    Schmidt-Bink does however foresee Kurfürstenstraße’s demise on the horizon. “When the construction work is finished and the security fences narrowing the street are removed, the cars and sex workers will be back in force. That’s when the pressure to ban the sex strip will peak,” she says.

    Despite the increased calls to rid the stretch of its most famous attractions, those in the middle of it remain defiant. “The strip’s not going anywhere. We’re here to stay,” says Julischka, a Hungarian sex worker who has clocked up six years patrolling the pavement opposite the LSD sex shop. “There aren’t any problems. Everyone gets on fine. From the Muslims leaving the mosque to the pedestrians, they never say a thing. No insults, nothing.” But then the 30-year-old in skin-tight leggings glances over her shoulder and suddenly falls silent. Ten metres away a beefy man stamps his authority on Julischka’s problem-free zone.

    #Berlin #Tiergarten #Kurfürstenstraße #Prostitution #Collège_Voltaire #Tourismus

  • Berlin’s failed rental revolution - Exberliner
    https://www.exberliner.com/berlin/berlins-failed-rental-revolution-crisis-expropriation-mietendeckel-entei

    8.8.2022 - How Berlin went from cheap rents to a housing crisis, saw its rent cap defeated and what will happen next with calls for expropriation.

    Nick saw it all coming. In the early 2000s, while some Berliners were spending less on rent than on beer, Nick and his partner took out a mortgage on an apartment in Kreuzberg. Friends were puzzled.

    “My German friends told me I was crazy for buying a flat when it was so cheap to rent,” says Nick, a Canadian importer. “They thought Berlin was immune to what was happening elsewhere. But I lived through one property boom in Vancouver. I knew what was coming.”

    Today Nick pays no rent, and his apartment is worth at least five times more than it cost. But his paper profit brings little comfort: selling would only require buying again at today’s fast-rising prices. And money can’t buy what doesn’t exist.

    Berlin’s housing drama is a story of knock-on effects: ignorant optimism – leaderless capitulation – ill-fated regulatory resistance – crushing legal defeat. But Berlin’s rental revolutionaries haven’t given up hope.

    Easy pickings

    Finding a rental apartment in Berlin in the early 2000s was as simple as walking down the street and ripping a tab off a “Zu vermieten” flyer. If you didn’t mind coal heating and shared hallway toilets, Berlin was your oyster.

    Most real estate investors were scared away by the lack of viable industry, and a militant anarcho-leftist scene which burnt cars to defend its territory. Cowed by a guilty conscience and an oversupply of flats, mainstream-voter landlords showed unusual pricing restraint.

    At the turn of the millennium, around five percent of Berlin flats were vacant (today it’s less than 1 percent). In 2002, the average rental price was €6.07 per m2 (it’s now €10.55 per m2). Demand was so low that the city’s public investment bank called for “necessary measures such as demolition and de-construction.”

    The sell-off

    Berlin’s leaders found another way of getting rid of property. The neoliberal SPD mayor Klaus Wowereit and his finance minister Thilo Sarrazin saw the city’s publicly-owned apartments as a piggy bank to pay off the city’s enormous debt.

    That strategy amounted to a fire sale of its assets. Between 2002 and 2007, Wowereit’s SPD, in coalition with Die Linke, sold off more than 110,000 flats – almost one third of the city’s housing stock. In one sale, 66,000 apartments were sold to investors including Goldman Sachs for €405 million – or €6000 for each flat.

    Only one regulation existed to control prices, capping increases at 20 percent over three years on existing contracts. But there were no limits on how much landlords could charge for new contracts. Sharp-eyed investors saw through the rhetoric of strong tenants’ rights, realising there was room for exploitation and no penalties for infringement.

    The buy-up

    With the Berlin Wall long gone, waves of international capital flooded the property market. The ‘tide that lifts all boats’ became a tsunami that smashed all cities, though the money took a little longer to wash up the Spree.

    In response to the 2008 global financial crash, governments printed trillions of dollars, euros and pounds and slashed interest rates, hoping investors would fund new job-creating activities. Instead they bought up undervalued assets with easy returns.

    Between 2009 and 2018, investors spent €139 billion purchasing old buildings in Berlin, and only €16 billion building new ones, according to research by Die Linke. During the same period, around 20 percent of the city’s properties changed hands.

    By 2017, Berlin was experiencing some of the biggest property price increases in the world. The following year, Berlin was declared the number one city in Europe for property investment.

    Rental prices were levelling up to match cities such as Madrid and Milan. But incomes had failed to keep pace. Even today, the majority of Berliners spend more than 30% of their income on housing – a rate economists consider to be both unaffordable and unsustainable.

    Too little, too late

    Politicians made moves to slow the spike. In 2013, Berlin limited maximum allowed increases on existing contracts to 15 percent over three years. In 2015, the Federal Government ruled new rental contracts could only be 10 percent above average official prices, though the law was largely ignored: one report found 95 percent of all new property listings were priced above the legally allowed amount.

    By 2018, Berliners were finally furious about property prices. A demonstration against Mietenwahnsinn (rental madness) drew thousands of participants – newspapers said 13,000; demo organisers counted 25,000. Among their demands? The expropriation of investors’ properties.

    The rent freeze

    Spooked Berlin politicians responded by offering a more moderate, yet still extraordinary reform: instead of seizing private property, they proposed freezing all rental prices for five years.

    The idea, first floated within the SPD, was endorsed by Berlin’s governing coalition parties, including the Greens and Die Linke, and despite internal disputes and heavy opposition, it made its way into law. On January 30, 2020, the Berlin parliament voted on the Act for the Restriction of Residential Rents in Berlin, better known as the Mietendeckel, or rent cap.

    “It’s the biggest and most important reform in the city since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” said Rainer Wild of the Berlin Tenants’ Association at the session.

    The Mietendeckel effectively suspended the free market for rental property in Berlin, a city where rentals dominate the property sector. It stopped most price increases for five years, except for flats built after 2014, to create an incentive for new developments. It mandated rent reductions for leases worth over 20 percent of average official prices. Cheating landlords were threatened with fines of up to €500,000.

    Opposition parties and the real estate lobby were astounded. They mounted a PR offensive using the slogan “Bauen Statt Deckeln” – build, don’t cap – which claimed, falsely, that the Mietendeckel discouraged investors from building new apartments. Opponents brought a case before Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court. For almost a year, Berliners endured a cliffhanger wait to see if judges would uphold or kill the great rent freeze experiment.

    The meltdown

    “The Mietendeckel is void” was the court’s April 15, 2021 verdict, declaring the city’s attempt to control rent prices unconstitutional because only the federal government was entitled to regulate rents. Gleeful landlords demanded rental back-payments, some worth thousands of euros.
    When the rent cap was overturned, acivists looked for other ways to combat rising rents. Photo: IMAGO / IPON

    Then, in November, came a second devastating legal decision. The Federal Administrative Court ruled that governments could no longer buy property using Vorkaufsrecht, or right of first purchase, which had allowed the city to forcibly acquire more than 12,000 private apartments and put them in public or cooperative hands. Within the space of months, Berlin had lost its two most powerful weapons to control property prices.

    Landlords strike back

    For more than a year, the Mietendeckel kept rents in check. During that time, some landlords kept their flats off the market, preferring no income to reduced profit while awaiting the court decision. One study found there were 60 percent fewer advertised flats during the Mietendeckel-era.

    Those have since bounced back – along with rental prices. Another analysis found Berlin had experienced the biggest rental price increases in all of Germany.

    Another impact of the Mietendeckel was to speed up the conversion of rental apartments into private residences. With prices at record highs, many owners decided to cash out and sell their properties rather than lease them, leading to a huge drop in potential rental properties.

    Potential buyers are paying high prices. In 2021, average buying prices hit €5416 per sqm, nine percent more than in 2020. But a bigger problem than cost is the highly competitive market.

    Every rental property listed is hotly contested, according to the portal ImmobilienScout24. Buying is also a battle: up to five interested owners register for each available property weekly, and most have to bid above the asking price to secure a purchase.

    The remains of the day

    What hope remains for Berlin’s tenants, now that the Mietendeckel is dead, and judges have barred the city from purchasing properties via Vorkaufsrecht?

    Germany’s top courts have made it clear: only federal government intervention is allowed in the property market. But the current governing coalition shows little appetite for major reform, mostly due to resistance from the neoliberal FDP party.

    The federal coalition agreement between the SPD, Greens and FDP promises only to maintain the existing Mietpreisbremse, or rent brake, the legislation that caps new rental contracts at 10 percent of average prices. For existing contracts, the maximum allowed rental increase could be set at 11 percent over three years (down from the current 15 percent).

    However, bringing legal action against deviant landlords will be up to tenants And even then, tenants are limited to reducing their rent to the legal maximum, but only from the date they lodge their complaint.

    A new dawn

    Housing activists weren’t satisfied with such incremental change. They’re now waging an even bigger battle to secure a truly ground-breaking revolution. The initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen is demanding that the Berlin city government use an obscure constitutional provision to forcibly acquire the property of any owner possessing more than 3000 apartments.

    Advocates say it could bring over 240,000 flats into public ownership to better control rental prices, and argue it should cost around €8 billion. Its opponents – including all political parties except Die Linke and the Greens – argue it would cost around €36 billion, which is a little over the city’s current annual operational budget.

    The idea captured the imagination of most Berliners. The enteignen campaigners collected tens of thousands of petition supporters and triggered a referendum. With the rent freeze melted, and little visible political appetite for reform, many Berliners saw mass expropriation as the only remaining solution to price spirals. In September 2021, the enteignen proposal received a greater percentage of votes than the winning coalition parties.

    Despite the overwhelming democratic mandate, the SPD under new mayor Franziska Giffey is staunchly against expropriation. Instead of implementing the idea as demanded by voters, a so-called expert commission was set up to examine the proposal and provide a recommendation. Few expect a positive outcome. Even if the city’s politicians obeyed voters and implemented Enteignung, the expropriations would almost certainly be challenged in the courts, which have a track record of supporting investors.

    Failure of the enteignen initiative could leave its million-plus supporters feeling defeated, disillusioned and disenchanted with democracy. Or it could spawn a new generation of outraged activists seeking even more radical means to fight investors. Win or lose, the enteignen campaign will reshape the city’s property politics for years to come.

    After two decades of property price hikes and political failures, activists have learned the lesson: if you want a minor reform, demand a revolution. And if you get your revolution, prepare for revenge.

    #Berlin #Wohnen #Immobilien #Mietendeckel #Gentrifizierung #Spekulation

  • Amok Mama: Why I love the €9 ticket - Exberliner
    https://www.exberliner.com/berlin/amok-mama-why-i-love-the-e9-ticket

    8.8.2022 by Jacinta Nandi - Living out in Lichtenrade seems cheap, until you factor in drunken taxi rides. But, with Germany’s €9 ticket, there’s no excuse not to take the bus.

    When I left my youngest kid’s dad, my two boys and I got “weggentrifiziert” to Lichtenrade, and when I say weggentrifiziert, I mean WEG gentrifiziert. Lichtenrade is literally the absolute middle of nowhere, the Arsch der Welt, the arsehole of the universe. We are officially in Berlin but surrounded on three sides by Brandenburg and one side by Marienfelde/Mariendorf, which, no, isn’t the same place. WE’RE EVEN FURTHER OUT THAN MARIENFELDE. THAT IS HOW FAR OUT WE LIVE. People who still, somehow, have normal flats, in normal parts of Berlin, will often say to me, when I tell them where I live, sadly, shamefacedly: “Oh I have never been to Lichtenrade!” like as if I am going to be surprised.

    Why would I be surprised? Before I moved here, I had never been here either! Nobody has! You go to Spandau more often! You go to Marzahn more often! You even go – and I am not being sarcastic or melodramatic, to Kladow more often! Nobody ever goes to Lichtenrade ever!

    I know you haven’t been here. Why would you? Nobody has ever been here, ever.

    Actually, I am exaggerating a tiny bit. On the main road of Lichtenrade – the fifth avenue of Lichtenrade – also known as Bahnhofstraße – there is a kebab shop that Heidi Klum went to once. You can tell it was just the one time because they have reproduced the same picture in different sizes and different colours to make it seem like they have more than one photo.

    It’s boring living in Lichtenrade. If they did one of those time-loop movies here, but set in 2006, it would LITERALLY take the protagonist at least 100 years of the same day to notice they were in a 2006 time loop movie. We have no Korean barbecue places, no poetry slams, no hipster porridge bars and no lesbian English-language bookshops. All of our Kneipen are either old men’s pubs or those weird sporty places. The only good thing about Lichtenrade is that the kebab shops sell alcohol. I love having a cheeky vodka lemon drink with my döner. Oh – and it’s cheap. I can still get a large Latte Machiatto for €2,50. See what I mean about 2006!

    I’ve got a British friend who also lives here. Yes, there are British people living here now. It’s a bit depressing because they all own property, while I am renting a cheapo apartment. But still. It’s nice to know some Brits, even if they are rich. “How much is your rent? €700 a month? That’s so cheap! Really great price. But you do have to add on your taxi costs to your rent each month. How much do you spend on taxis in a month? Or Ubers? Like when you’re drunk and the M76 isn’t working? For me, it’s at least €300, so that means, theoretically, you could afford at least a €1000 rent a month and live in the city.”

    My heart turned to stone, my face to marble, the inside of my mouth to ash. SHE WAS RIGHT. I spent at least €300 a month on taxis when drunk! I had to add my taxi costs onto my rent – actually my flat isn’t that cheap at all, after all.

    You know what, though? Since they invented the €9 ticket, I am too stingy to order an Uber or fall into a taxi, no matter how drunk I am. I know the trains are almost free, and it just makes me like using them more. I actually think they FEEL more comfortable just because I know they’re practically free. To be honest, I even like night buses now. I used to feel like waiting for a night bus was the most miserable thing in the world. Now I just sit there cheerfully, knowing one will be along in a minute.

    The €9 ticket makes you feel connected to the world – mobile, flexible, ready to go anywhere. Even, it turns out, if you live in Lichtenrade!

    #Berlin #Lichtenrade #Bahnhofstraße #Taxi #Uber

    • 9€ le voyage en Allemagne, normal.

      Inflation, pas d’indexation des salaires, donc baisse du pouvoir d’achat,
      Le gouvernement allemand fait un effort pour cacher tout cela.

      Cet hiver, avec l’embargo sur le pétrole et le gaz russe d’ursula gertrud von der leyen, née albrecht et de l’union européenne,
      les trains pourront ils encore circuler an Allemagne ?