In general though, maintenance on average only costs ~150-300$ a month, so it's not necessary.
Isn't that why landlords argue they should make profit, because they carry the risk?
Under rent control the situation goes from being extremely advantageous to the landlord to just being regular advantageous.
In Berlin, people that already have social relations and support structures are the one that get discounted rent, which is what we want! This is better than if wealthy people get to pay less for housing. It's not as if the alternative made it cheaper.
An important part of the regulation is that the landlord cannot raise the rent when a new tenant moves in - the rent is locked for the unit, not the tenant. This prevents situations like New York, where you are essentially unable to move.
Mumbai did this and it was a disaster: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/04/tw...
Now of course this legislation "prevented that", by refusing owners do this while tenants are in the apartments. Except the net result seems to be when tenants do leave, the apartments are taken out of the housing market altogether, exacerbating the already pretty critical problems.
And in the German press you will find accounts of pressure tactics (such as schemes to force tenants into default, "using" things like a divorce to kick people out (man signed contract, woman stays in apartment, gets kicked out when man refuses to pay but woman is not allowed to sign contract in her own name), creating critical maintenance problems ...) to create that situation.
So no, that is a very, very bad thing.
are the apartments just kept locked up?
I know rental stock immediately opened up in Dublin when the pandemic started, for example, before such a large increase would have arisen from renters leaving the city for suburbs.
The key thing here is supply and demand. If there is no profit to be made in renting out the property, then there is little reason to buy them up, in actuality. The exception is large companies that buy up a large amount of properties to manipulate the markets, but this has already been thinked of.
The main result of this if the unoccupied tax is used when necessary is a fall in the value of properties. This is a good thing for everyone that doesn't own a property that is unoccupied. This is what is wanted.
Because rent could be considered affordable in Vancouver ? In which Canada do you live ?
Whatever is going on in Vancouver, it isn't effective (at controlling rent prices)
Even if there were those lots of people unable to move, would that actually be a problem in various cases? Unlike many other European countries, where the countryside has emptied out and brain-drained as its young people move to the big city, Germany has managed to keep many of its small towns viable places to live and work.