#297: Landlord to other landlord: hold my beer
Plus the smoke rings over the city and getting paid to deregister
Hey 20 Percent!
And I’m off on my becoming German mission. Sort of.
I attempted to get an appointment for the Einbürgerungstest at a Volkshochschule on the edges of Berlin but failed — most said they have no free slots and I didn’t feel like standing for hours in some line so I instead signed up for a test in Neubrandenburg — two hours and one entire German state away.
In October.
As I’ve said, I’m taking this slowly lest I get frustrated and decide instead to move to … anywhere else. I like that corner of Germany and will just make a day of it — get some lunch. Maybe swim in a lake. Try to stop thinking everyone around me voted for the AfD in the European elections (70% of voters in Meck-Pomm didn’t).
I’m hoping to be German by springtime.
More importantly — Spain or Germany?
Have a good weekend!
Andrew
PS: Thanks to everyone who came out for my half-solo last Friday. It turned out to be twice as fun as I had hoped, and I was already expecting it to be fun. If you’d like to support this newsletter, think of paying for a subscription!
Get €100 for leaving Berlin
Worried you were going to get fined if you didn’t register your address — the Anmeldung — quickly after moving to Berlin? Soon it may be Berlin who will be paying. Well, for de-registering at least. The center-left SPD’S Sven Heinemann wants Berlin to pay people €100 for deregistering when they leave Germany’s capital, according to Tagesspiegel (paywall). The city-state last month lost €450 million in annual tax revenue when a 2022 census discovered about 130,000 fewer people were living in Berlin than an estimate based on the number of Anmeldungen. The numbers were skewed upward because many people who left Berlin — often non-Germans — didn’t deregister. Berlin gets about €3,500 in federal tax revenue per resident from a fund that attempts to evenly distribute taxes among states, known as the Länderfinanzausgleich.
No, there aren’t swaths of empty flats
What else did the census show? That the belief that Berlin is full of flats kept empty for speculative reasons is a myth — just over 40,500 apartments were vacant at the time of the census with just a fourth vacant for longer than a year, according to Morgenpost. While healthy residential property markets usually have about 5% vacancy to allow renters to move or new arrivals to find an abode, the figure means Berlin has a low 2% vacancy rate, with little relief in sight.
Low-income flat agreement? Forget it!
About that property market — today in shady landlord dealings: A developer was to include 215 apartments for low-income renters as part of a new development near the Hauptbahnhof known as Europacity. The six new buildings have a total of 944 flats. But the developer has now leased the low-income apartments to a co-living specialist (42sqm/€1,500 month) despite an agreement with Berlin to provide affordable housing, according to taz. Why? The developer said it would have only had to provide the low-income housing if it had availed itself of construction subsidies but it instead used its own funds. Expect a years-long legal battle with a disapointing ruling.
Germany-wide news
🏛️ First African-born German parliamentarian resigning
🎶 The viral German song that proves the language isn’t so hässlich
💶 Bank cancels AfD’s donation account
Factoid
Berlin’s longest street is Adlergestell at 11.9 kilometers. It runs from Niederschöneweide in southeastern Berlin to the village of Schmöckwitz on the edge of our city-state. No, you’re not the only one who thinks “Schmöckwitz” sounds like a yiddish insult. A “Gestell” is a forest path and probably a historic part of the name but no one has any idea why the Adler (eagle) was added. Second place? Landsberger Allee in northeast Berlin at 10.9km.
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About the Einbürgerungstest... I did one recently. What I did was: I wrote an email to VHS Pankow (where I live) and asked about it. They replied shortly telling me the nearest date, said it was only a few spots, and that I needed to apply in person. So they gave the working hours of the secretary of the 3 nearest VHSs. I went to one of them and applied immediately. That easy. Maybe it helps you out.
Love the 1962 pic.