Pouring (csk). As the “voice of the street”, the Giessen left wants to score points in the local elections. “We stand by the side of the citizens, take their concerns seriously and take them to parliament,” emphasized top candidate Ali Al-Dailami on Wednesday at an online election campaign evening. He received support from the most prominent representative of his party.
Sahra Wagenknecht was completely convinced of Al-Dailami’s closing argument: she could “actually only join in,” began the last statement by the federal politician, who is generally not known for her lack of words.
Wagenknecht’s judgments were correspondingly clear on the issues raised earlier. “A society that even thinks about the return on equity of a hospital has a problem,” she said about health and care. Funding research on vaccines with public money, but leaving production and distribution to “the market and its mechanisms,” she called a “perversion.”
From a local political point of view, Al-Dailami examined, among other things, the housing sector. Giessen appears here “symbolically for numerous cities, not only in Hesse”. Because the red-black-green magistrate “fatally still leaves far too much room for private investors.”
As a result, especially with the student-dominated social structure, there is more »luxury« and property than necessary – and at the same time there is still a lack of »affordable housing for normal wage earners«. The latest examples of such “undesirable developments” in Giessen are Keplerstrasse 1 and Ludwigstrasse 50.
Left housing policy, however, does not only rely on subsidized new buildings and plenty of apartments in municipal or cooperative hands, explained Wagenknecht. They are also using the right of first refusal on vacant buildings and land, and they are increasing the social housing quota towards 30 percent. “Housing is one of the most explosive social problems of the future,” says Al-Dailami. It is all the more important to “deprive private investors of the red carpet that has been rolled out for them for years.”
Both discussants warned that the Corona crisis could significantly widen the already large social gap in the coming years. Since recipients of low wages and the self-employed are already suffering disproportionately from losses, future follow-up costs will have to be financed through top taxes and property levies, demanded Wagenknecht.
Al-Dailami turned his attention to the municipal budgets. A higher trade tax is the completely wrong idea because it slows down economic growth and incidentally drives the municipalities into an “undercutting competition”.
Instead, a wealth tax helps, the income of which the federal government passes on to the municipalities. Debt cuts for particularly troubled cities and districts would also have to be found.
Al-Dailami suggested that anyone who then wanted to generate more income could drop by the Sparkasse. In the future, your profits should flow into the budgets of the city and district – and not “ever higher salaries in the executive board”.
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