By the way, land is also limited in Berlin and therefore expensive. Makes building cheap apartments difficult.
This is the other reality of free markets and scarce resources: if there is only so much land in Berlin, and lots of people want to live in Berlin, then it means some people won’t be able to. That’s just the reality. Unfortunately that means people who can’t afford have to move. As sad as that is, we don’t have a better system for allocating scarce resources sustainably.
20 years ago when I moved to London I'd have loved to find a tiny self contained Japanese style 10 square metre apartment[0], which is cheaper (in actuality, not just inflationwise) and far nicer and featureful than the HMO I ended up in.
https://www.livingbiginatinyhouse.com/tiny-house-tours/tiny-...
Does anyone who has lived in Japan and abroad think there is anything "cosy" about Japanese housing?
It's cramped, of poor quality, and manages to be colder than the outside in winter and warmer than the outside in summer. I've seen some crap properties in London but Japan takes the biscuit.
A Japanese micro apartment for less than half that price [0] would have been far better.
Same with hotels. I still go to London fairly frequently, in fact I had 3 nights there this week. I turn up to the hotel, sleep in a bed, have a shower, then leave, maybe with breakfast. For that I'm charged £90 plus.
[0] https://www.nippon.com/en/news/fnn20200211001/tokyo%E2%80%99...
You can find cheap rooms in either city, you can find bargains in either city, what you won't find en masse in Tokyo (nor any other city in Japan as far as I'm aware) is housing with walls that seem like walls and not paper, with insulation, and you certainly won't find central heating.