Berlin's rent cap offers a new way of thinking about Britain's housing crisis | Alexander Vasudevan

This should be an important first step in a conversation about how speculative finance has affected the right to a home

For most tenants in the UK - conditioned to the prospect of rising rents, poor living conditions and the ongoing threat of eviction - the very idea of receiving a letter from their landlord outlining a reduction in their monthly rent would be absolutely unthinkable. And yet this is exactly what has happened to thousands of renters in Berlin, as the second stage of the city's rent cap, or Mietendeckel (literally a lid" on rents), came into force on Monday.

The first stage of the cap was part of a new law passed by the city's House of Representatives in January 2020. It came into effect on 23 February 2020, after which point landlords were strictly forbidden from charging rent for existing leases that were in excess of any rent that had effectively been agreed by 18 June 2019. According to the second stage, any rents that exceeded the acceptable rent caps by more than 20% - calculated according to residential location and the quality of fittings - had to be reduced. Landlords that did not comply with the new law faced heavy fines.