Rock-Throwing Berliners Take On Developers in Rent Clash

Wearing black masks and hoodies, they torched garbage cans, smashed windows and splashed red paint on the glass façade of a new luxury apartment building. When police arrived, the perpetrators repelled them with a hail of rocks and fled.

The scene, which played out this summer in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, is an extreme example of an escalating dispute over rising rents between long-time residents who say they’re being priced out of their neighborhoods and newcomers flocking to the city as the economy picks up.