The Forum is not a special case. Around half a million people in Berlin live co-operatively, at stable rents, in buildings that serve nobody as an investment. While the city’s asking rents have risen by around 86 per cent in ten years, co-operatives have been showing for decades that it can work differently: surpluses go into maintenance, refurbishment and new shared housing, not into private pockets.
Alliance of young co-operatives
Forum Kreuzberg is active in the Bündnis junger Genossenschaften, an alliance of more than 40 co-operatives founded over the past thirty years or so. With visionary projects and a great deal of initiative they create affordable flats, commercial space and neighbourhoods for Berlin.
The alliance speaks up. Its paper „Berlin, warum bist du so teuer geworden?“ names the problem precisely: the city is growing, moving house is next to impossible, shops and cultural venues are being pushed out of the neighbourhoods, and more than 1.1 million Berlin households would be entitled to subsidised housing while the stock of rent-controlled homes has fallen below 100,000. What it calls for is a policy that allocates state-owned land to co-operatives, widens funding and takes co-operation seriously.
Why this concerns us
Since 1972 the Forum has been practising what the alliance demands: land in charitable hands, housing without returns, commercial space for craft and culture instead of the highest bid. We are glad to share our experience, with young projects, with neighbourhood initiatives, with everyone who wants to take housing off the market for good. Our guided tours are there for that too.
