CROWDED BERLIN

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 956, 26 April 1930, Page 30

CROWDED BERLIN

226,000 AWAIT VACANCIES IN CITY FLATS RENTING THE LANDLORDS Mow that the final evacuation of the Rhineland is in sight and preparations are afoot for a great celebration when the last French soldier leaves the third zone, residents of Berlin metropolis are beginning to ask: “How about the evacuation of the fourth zone, the zone in which we renters of furnished fiats have to live'.' When are the landlords and landladies quartered on us ever since the war going to pack up and leave us with a little privacy?” One reason why Berliners have sympathised with their fellow-country-men in occupied territory is that almost every tenant of a furnished flat here has an “occupied zone” in his home —a room ocupied by a landlord or landlady, who either doesn't ■want to live elsewhere or fears the wrath of the housing commission. Strictly speaking, no one has a right to sublet a furnished flat in Berlin merely for the profit it brings, monthly for an unfurnished flat, puts If Herr Schmidt, paying 130 marks furniture into it and sublets it for 400 marks, he is liable to be ousted by the housing corfimission unless he can show that the sub-tenants are merely sharing it with him. So the custom is to rent the landlord along with the flat, for better or worse. Flats of this semi-private character, fairly well furnished, can be had for from £ 17 to £ 20 monthly. Tenants who rebel at paying so much without getting ordinary privacy have»the alternative of trying to get vacant flat and furnishing it. This amounts to trying rather than to getting, for the housing commission has a list of 226,000 Germans waiting for vacant flats in Berlin. Nevertheless, by paying what is called

an ‘abstand,” or bonus, of between £SO and £l5O for a vacant lease, it is sometimes possible by pulling wires to get a flat. Unfortunately the most desirable fiats usually are in a district where the housing commission is particularly strict, and the would-be tenaut must produce proof that he has waited two years for a fiat or has an invalid wife or mother who will die if she has to stay where she is.

The upshot of it all is that people who cannot afford to pay “abstand,*’ any many who could afford to but cannot get the necessary urgent permit from the housing commission, live in furnished fiats with landlord or landlady sharing, the kitchen and bathroom.

But maybe in a year or two enough new apartment houses will have been built in Berlin to justify a great evacuation of the “fourth zone.” What a celebration there will be then among the tenants! The Rhineland-Is-Free celebrations will seem like a gloomest compared to it. For what is freedom, but a little privacy?