Apartment-hunting in Berlin: A lottery Barbara Steenbergen, head of the EU liaison office at the International Union of Tenants (IUT), is delighted with the rent cap. "It's a blessing," she told DW. Like many NGOs, the IUT has been offering tenants an online tool to calculate how much their rent could be reduced by, and among those who checked, the average rent reduction turned out to be €210 ($255) per month: "The people really say it's a relief," she said. "It's like a wage increase." The IUT estimates that 365,000 people in the city now have the right to reduce their rent. But the respo...