Berlin's ballooning rents to be frozen for five years

FILE PHOTO: Protesters hold a banner during a demonstration against rising rents and gentrification in Berlin, Germany April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo

BERLIN (Reuters) - Berlin's city government decided on Tuesday to freeze rents for five years, heeding complaints from residents that their once famously affordable city was pricing them out.

For decades after German unification in 1990, the capital was a magnet for artists, musicians and students drawn by housing far cheaper than in other major European cities - partly the legacy of Berlin's decades marooned inside Communist East Germany as a mere satellite of the capitalist West's economy.