At first glance, the tenants’ association’s initiative, for which the collection of signatures began on June 3, 2025, sounds like a good thing: lower rents, more protection for tenants, more say. But if you don’t allow yourself to be dazzled by fine-sounding titles, you’ll realize that this initiative combats symptoms – and cements the causes.
Of course, rising asking rents are a real burden, especially in urban centers. But the impression that this is a conspiracy on the part of landlords falls short of the mark. The figures are clear: according to the Federal Office for Housing, there is an annual shortage of up to 10,000 apartments – with a simultaneous increase in households of around 50,000 units. The fact that asking rents are rising is not surprising – it is the result of growing excess demand.
And this is precisely the problem with the initiative. It wants to correct pricing administratively instead of eliminating the structural bottlenecks on the housing market. Capping yields may seem popular in the short term, but in the long term it deprives residential construction of important investment incentives. Private investors – including pension funds and insurance companies – are currently responsible for a large proportion of new construction activity. Curtailing their profitability scares off capital and risks a further shortage.
The myth of the yield-hungry investor is a false one. More than half of rental apartments in Switzerland belong to pension funds, insurance companies or pension schemes – in other words, ultimately to the population itself. Anyone who cuts their returns is jeopardizing our retirement provision. The housing market is not a playground for socially romantic experiments, but a complex system that has to reconcile supply and demand. Anyone who undermines this mechanism is not solving any problems – they are exacerbating them.
The right of first refusal for non-profit housing is also tricky. It effectively means expropriation with a bureaucratic detour – and a further step towards a state-controlled housing market. I warn against this: such an intervention may be ideologically motivated, but in practical terms it will mainly result in delays and inefficiency. Non-profit housing construction is justified, but it is no substitute for the market-driven volume that we urgently need.
Instead, we need realistic solutions. SVIT Switzerland has formulated 20 specific demands in its housing agenda: faster and coordinated approval procedures, a reduction in objections, promotion of redensification and space-efficient housing. Tenancy law itself must also become more differentiated: It protects existing tenants too much and not enough those who are urgently looking for an apartment. This is neither fair nor efficient.
In short: the housing shortage will not be solved by more regulation, but by more apartments. Anyone who hinders new construction, whether out of ideological conviction or a false sense of justice, ultimately only widens the gap between supply and demand – and thus harms the very people they claim to be protecting.
