Keystone-SDA
The Swiss Tenants’ Association has submitted the signatures for the rent control initiative. Its key demand is that rents should be reviewed automatically and regularly, and that a rent must be reduced if it is unreasonably high.
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According to a press release from the Swiss Tenants’ Association on Tuesday, more than 140,000 people have signed the initiative. This makes it clear, it said, that many people are no longer willing to accept that tenants are paying “unreasonably high rents” while property companies maximise their returns “at the expense of households”.
The Tenants’ Association argues that, as interest rates have been falling for some time, rents should also have fallen. However, the opposite has happened. A key reason for this, it says, is unreasonably high rents, which are scarcely monitored – even though such rents are prohibited by law. Yet Switzerland, where 60% of households live in rented accommodation, is very much a country of tenants.
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Translated from German, sub-edited by ts
