A few days ago, deputies of the movement Ne davimo Beograd presented a draft law, which provides for administrative regulation of the amount of rents for the rental of apartments in private ownership. According to that proposal, for an apartment of 50 square meters, the rent would be limited to a maximum of 300 euros; such apartments in the center of Belgrade, even before the rent increase that followed the arrival of tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians, were rented for around 500 euros.
From that movement, they do not even hide that it is not a temporary solution, but that the intention is to regulate the rental of private apartments in the long term. Such a solution is essentially identical to the tenancy law institute introduced by the communist authorities at the end of World War II. But even that government realized in the 1970s that the administrative regulation of renting private apartments was outdated, so it was abolished and apartments could be rented out by free negotiation.
"Deathly Embrace"
This did not apply only to citizens who then found themselves as holders of occupancy rights and to their direct heirs. And that issue has not been resolved even to this day: tens of thousands of private apartments are still inhabited (mostly by the heirs) of the former holders of occupancy rights at a low, administratively determined rent. Neither the owners of these apartments nor their users are satisfied with that status: the first because they cannot dispose of their property freely, and the second because these apartments are more than 80 years old and are in bad condition. Neither the owners want to invest in them, nor the tenants have an interest in it, so the apartments usually fall into disrepair. It is a kind of "death hug" in which the state brought the owners and tenants of those apartments - these situations, in most cases, are resolved only when the tenants die without heirs and thus the apartment is "returned" to the owner.
Absurd exception
This is exactly what would happen if such a solution were adopted: the owners would not be able to dispose of the apartments freely, because the tenants could use them for the rest of their lives at a low rent; they simply would not have the motivation to buy an apartment if the rents are guaranteed to be low and the price of the apartments is high in relation to their income.
A special gem in this proposal is that the administrative determination of rents is introduced only for apartments built before 2015. Thus, for example, all apartments from "Belgrade on the Water" (as well as various other complexes built during the progressive rule) would be freely rented out, while all other apartment owners would be left to the mercy (or better said, the mercy) of the state. This would give special privileges to (rich) citizens who bought apartments in the last few years. There is no rational explanation for such an exception except that perhaps one of the proponents owns just such an apartment, so he wanted to "protect" himself from the application of such a law.
Return to communism
The consequences of adopting the proposal would be catastrophic for the rental market in Belgrade: simply no one would want to rent out an apartment legally, because that would risk a lifelong grudge against the tenants. Instead of our citizens, apartment owners in Belgrade would reorient themselves exclusively to short-term rentals to foreigners, or apartments would be rented out without any paperwork.
And maybe the NDBG is planning to organize, following the model of the communist authorities after the Second World War, patrols of activists in leather coats who would check who lives (unregistered) in apartments owned by others. That would probably be the only way to ensure the implementation of such a law, because few would accept to legally rent out an apartment under such conditions.
Two law professors stood behind that proposal - Svetislav Kostić from the BU Law Faculty and Jelena Jerinić from the Union University Law Faculty. The paradox is that Jelena Jerinić, a professor of constitutional law (and member of parliament) explains such a solution by referring to the constitutional possibility of limiting the right to property when there is a public interest, while not mentioning that the Constitution in the same article says that this is possible only with compensation that cannot be lower than the market price. According to that constitutional provision, the state would have to pay the apartment owners the difference between the market rent and the administrative rent. That would only create a mess that we would not get out of for decades, just like we didn't get out of the tenancy right from the time of communism.
If we are already going back to communist times, it might not be a bad idea to propose another measure from that era to the NDBG movement: to return the labor legislation from the 1970s and to decide on labor disputes in "joint labor courts", where in practice it was impossible that the employee loses his job. Guaranteed employment is essentially even more important for citizens than controlled rent - because if someone loses their job, they won't be able to pay the rent, no matter how low it is.
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