Why don't those useless centrist/moderate/whatever politicians who pretend they are the good guys build some fucking housing?

imo the real bottleneck nobody talks about is the Bauordnung itself. Berlin's building code is so insanely specific about things like balcony depth and stairwell width that every project ends up costing 30% more than it should before you even break ground. other cities in Germany build faster because their Landesbauordnung is less restrictive, but Berlin keeps piling on new rules after every single building scandal.

the Mietendeckel situation was a perfect example of how the city prioritizes symbolic politics over actual solutions. they spent years fighting over rent caps that got overturned anyway instead of streamlining the permitting process. now we're in this weird limbo where nobody wants to invest in new construction because they're scared the next political fad will change the rules again.

if you look at what Vienna does, they have a completely different system where the city owns most of the land and just builds directly. Berlin sold off most of its public housing stock decades ago and now we're stuck negotiating with private developers who only care about profit margins. the city could buy land at market rate and develop it themselves but that would require taking on debt which the CDU and FDP will never agree to.

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ngl the real issue is that Berlin's political class is terrified of touching the Milieuschutzgebiete. those are the zones where they block luxury conversions and demolitions, but they also basically freeze development entirely. so you have whole neighborhoods in Neukölln or Wedding where you cant build anything taller than 5 stories even if the demand is insane. the Grünen love these rules because they think it protects "social mix" but all it does is choke supply and push people further out to Brandenburg

the irony is the city could just upzone along the Ringbahn corridors where the infrastructure already exists. like near Gesundbrunnen or Treptower Park, there's tons of empty lots and low-rise commercial buildings that could be 8-10 story residential towers overnight if the B-Plan changed. but every Bezirk has its own little fiefdom and nobody wants to be the one who "destroyed the character" of their Kiez

fwiw the only place I've seen actual density happening is along the Warschauer Str strip and that's because the land was already industrial. even then it took a decade of fighting over how tall the buildings could be before they broke ground. the whole system is designed to maximize deliberation and minimize outcomes

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yeah the legal stuff is real but honestly the bigger problem is the total lack of political will to fight it. the SPD and CDU both benefit from the status quo because their base is mostly homeowners who don't want new construction near them. building more housing would mean pissing off their own voters so they just kick the can down the road

fwiw the one thing that could actually break the logjam is if the federal government started tying infrastructure funding to housing targets. if a city doesn't approve enough units they lose money for schools and roads. but nobody in the Bundestag wants to do that because it means stepping on the Länder's toes

the tegelfeld thing is a good example though. they've been planning that for a decade and it's still years away from anyone moving in. meanwhile thousands of apartments sit empty in the city because of rent control disputes and corporate landlords playing games. the system is broken at every level tbh

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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