He wasn’t expecting too much anyway, says Adrian Gettig*. But he had already hoped that he would at least get a little help in doing something about the illegally high rent that he has to pay to his landlady month after month when he accepted the help offered by the city of Hamburg last year. “But the way things have gone now is frustrating,” says Gettig. “You feel left alone and powerless.” Because it’s been going on for six months – nothing.
Gettig lives in the west of Hamburg; at the beginning of 2023 he found the 3-room apartment in an apartment building. “Picturesque from the outside, a bit old on the inside,” says Gettig. Since he had to find a new apartment as soon as possible, he took it, even if the structural condition of the apartment left something to be desired in some places.
At this point in time, 14 euros rent per square meter seemed higher than permitted. “Anyone who is urgently looking for an apartment is at the mercy of this housing market,” says Gettig.
Against rent usury at least The red-green Hamburg Senate has been promising help since the beginning of last year: “The rent report is intended to make it easier for Hamburg tenants to report potentially excessive rents directly and digitally to the responsible department,” the Senate cheered at the end of February 2025 when it announced the surprising introduction of this instrument announced.
There is even a prison sentence
A rent that exceeds the local comparative rent by more than 20 percent can ultimately constitute an administrative offense. If it is more than 50 percent higher, the landlord may even face imprisonment. Damaged tenants will then receive back the excess rent paid and will have to pay less in the future.
“This digital offer is an important step towards greater protection for tenants,” said the responsible Senator for Urban Development and Housing, Karen Pein (SPD), last February. “The digital rent detector gives us a tool with which we can take better and quicker action against excessive rental prices,” said Pein. Gettig, on the other hand, does not have the impression that this has made anything better or even faster.
First, last year he had his suspicions that he was paying too much rent Rent usurious app from the Left Party checked. “Before, I had grudgingly accepted the rental price,” says Gettig. “You don’t want to get in trouble with your landlord.”
After its introduction at the end of 2024, the help offered by the Left was quickly used thousands of times. Because other defects in the apartment had not been remedied by the landlord, Gettig then decided to do something about it. “It turned out that I was almost 50 percent above the comparable rent,” says Gettig.
Using the app, he then sent a report to the housing office responsible for him in the Altona district. From there he received a final standardized response from the authorities: He should please enter his data again into the city’s online service portal – the rent report. He did so in mid-August. “I haven’t heard anything since.”
Hamburg is no exception with these poor results. A look at Hanover shows this
Gettig is no exception; in terms of waiting time, he is actually in the middle of the field so far. So far, Hamburg residents have used the rent report 359 times, and there have been more than 1,000 reports using the Left’s rent extortion app.
As of January 16, in not a single case have legal proceedings been initiated, let alone completed, or even registered landlords contacted. To date, the authorities have only sent notifications about the status to tenants “in individual cases and if necessary upon request”.
Like Gettig, Hamburg is no exception with these poor results. A look at Hanover shows this: around 250 cases have been reported to the city there since the beginning of 2025 via the Left app. But so far not a single case has been initiated against landlords. So it probably doesn’t help much that in December a red-green majority in the city council voted in favor of setting up a city registration portal – based on the Hamburg model.
The Senate selected the housing protection services at the district level to prosecute the reported cases in Hamburg. At times he had to grudgingly announce that such a “very comprehensive clarification of the matter” was “currently not possible” from these authorities; the the Senate announced in November 2025 in response to a request from the left-wing faction. The employees are “busy with a variety of tasks, primarily in the area of security.”
When asked about the long waiting times experienced by Gettig and many other tenants, André Stark, spokesman for the Authority for Urban Development and Housing, said: “No, the situation is currently not satisfactory.” But they are trying to remedy the situation: through a new task force, “which we will set up centrally in the authority for urban development and housing in order to quickly process the outstanding reports”.
Enforcing law is complicated
But the truth is, the authority spokesman adds, that “the prospects of success remain manageable, as the proof and enforcement of the relevant federal law is far too complicated.”
It urgently needs to be done at the federal level Regulations in the Economic Crimes Act are to be streamlined, in order to free tenants from the excessive burden of proof – which led, for example, to tenants having to prove that they were dependent on the conclusion of the rental agreement that was unfavorable to them. Only then would there be a chance of applying the rent usury paragraph.
There was no mention of such difficulties last February when Hamburg’s red-green Senate celebrated the introduction of the rent detector. Rather, he promised that “the departments could take targeted action” with the information from the rent report.
But back then there were only four days until the general election; through the federal election a week It had previously been indicated that the SPD and the Greens would probably lose a significant amount to the Left. And she focused her election campaign largely on housing.
Politically dependent on the landlords
According to Heike Sudmann, parliamentary group leader of the Left in Hamburg, “empty promises from the Senate” are now evident. The task force that has now been announced comes far too late, while tenants like Gettig are paying too much rent month after month. “The Hamburg Senate has done nothing about rent rip-offs for a year,” complains Sudmann, but simply lets those affected “continue to pay.”
But it’s not just the opposition that is disappointed with the rent report; the tenants’ association in Hamburg. “The Senate sees itself as dependent on the private housing industry to build new apartments – and it obviously doesn’t want to mess with them if it does more to combat rent usury,” says the association’s chairman Rolf Bosse. But that would be at the expense of affordable housing, which the SPD and the Greens constantly describe as a “core concern”.
At some point, Adrian Gettig didn’t want to wait any longer and contacted the tenants’ association. In response to his threat, the landlord at least offered a settlement, which, however, was several thousand euros less than what Gettig had allegedly overpaid over the years. How this will turn out in the end remains to be seen.
Legally prosecuted for rent usury In any case, the landlord will not do so in this way. This would be possible through official intervention, but Gettig’s hope for this has expired after months of silence from the authorities. “The city,” he says, “didn’t help me to simply exercise my rights.”
*Name changed
Collaboration: Nadine Conti