Alfred Amonn · 1953
Alfred Amonn’s 1953 German-language article examines the restoration of market coordination in Swiss housing after wartime controls. Its two sections, “Das Ziel” and “Der Weg,” distinguish the justification of normalization from its socially workable implementation. The central distinction is between rent freezes and protection against termination: continued housing scarcity warrants retaining security of tenure, but does not, in Amonn’s view, justify indefinitely preserving low rents for established tenants.
Amonn defines normal housing provision through free price formation, contractual freedom, and the adjustment of supply to demand. This mechanism presupposes the practical possibility of building additional housing. Wartime restrictions therefore justified exceptional intervention against unaffordable rents and homelessness. His criticism concerns the failure to prepare for withdrawing these measures:
Es war aber immerhin ein schwerer Fehler, daß man die Rückkehr zum Normalen nicht wenigstens gleich schon von Anfang an ins Auge gefaßt und geplant hat.
English translation: It was nevertheless a grave mistake that the return to normality was not at least envisaged and planned right from the outset.
Planning matters because temporary protection changes expectations. What initially suspends ordinary market relations can become an apparently permanent entitlement, making reform politically difficult.
Was seinerzeit als wohl begründbares Ausnahmerecht geschaffen wurde, wird heute von denen, die davon profitieren, schon mehr oder weniger als normales Recht betrachtet, obwohl dieser Zustand objektiv in keiner Weise mehr begründbar ist.
English translation: What was created at the time as a well-justifiable exceptional law is today already regarded by those who profit from it as more or less normal law, although this state of affairs is objectively no longer justifiable in any way.
Amonn’s argument is both economic and juridical. Landlords’ rights were restricted for an emergency purpose, not permanently extinguished. He explains the durability of controls through the authority acquired by longstanding arrangements:
Das hängt mit dem dem Rechtsinstitut der «Verjährung» zugrundeliegenden Prinzip zusammen, daß langjähriger Bestand im Volke das Ansehen von Recht annimmt und infolgedessen daran nicht mehr gerüttelt werden darf.
English translation: This is connected with the principle underlying the legal institution of "prescription," namely that what has subsisted for many years takes on among the people the standing of law and may consequently no longer be disturbed.
Against this consolidation of emergency law, Amonn separates the original grounds for intervention: the inability to expand housing supply and the disproportion between tenants’ incomes and potential market rents. Restored earnings and new households’ payment of new-building rents suggest to him that the second condition no longer applies generally. Frozen rents consequently benefit established tenants without regard to their needs or their landlords’ circumstances.
The supply problem nevertheless persists. Construction is again possible, but vacancies remain insufficient to permit easy relocation. Amonn therefore opposes immediately restoring landlords’ unrestricted freedom to terminate contracts. Normalization does not mean simultaneous abolition of every protection.
His case against the rent freeze turns on the use of existing housing. Because new construction remains expensive, a smaller new apartment may cost more than a larger controlled dwelling. Households whose children have left, or whose membership has otherwise declined, consequently have little incentive to move. Older accommodation can remain underoccupied while newer households inhabit expensive dwellings more densely. Amonn thus reverses the usual sequence of reform: rent adjustment should not simply await the disappearance of scarcity, because the differential between old and new rents itself helps perpetuate scarcity. His causal argument rests on incentives and changing household size.
The proposed transition is gradual. Rents would rise over several years toward anticipated market levels, with older dwellings remaining cheaper than new construction and price supervision restraining economically unjustified increases. Social protection would become more selective. Amonn considers differentiated increases by dwelling size, local examination of tenants’ and landlords’ circumstances, appeals to price-control authorities, and exemptions near subsistence income. A compensation fund partly financed by rent increases could assist low-income occupants of both old and new housing. These proposals seek to replace the accidental advantage of a controlled tenancy with assistance based on actual need.
The closing discussion treats public information as a condition of reform. Amonn challenges the equation of ownership with wealth and tenancy with poverty, and questions aggregate rent and cost-of-living indices. A rising proportion of expensive new dwellings can increase an average without changing individual tenants’ rents. Separate indices and occupancy statistics for old and new housing would make disparities more visible.
The article connects market restoration with continued tenure protection, targeted assistance, and statistical differentiation. Its governing question is whether emergency controls still address the conditions that originally justified them, or instead preserve unequal advantages and impede fuller use of the housing stock.
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