Chapter 7 details the retrenchment of German housing programs during the country's structural economic crisis in the 2000s. Unlike American policymakers who expanded housing programs during the 2008-2009 crisis, German leaders cut housing programs to reduce fiscal deficits and reallocate funds to education, research, and technology. Following reunification, Germany experienced a brief housing boom in the 1990s, driven by demand-side housing stimulus programs, including a mortgage interest deduction, to spur growth in eastern Germany. However, this boom soon turned into a construction bust, leaving the country with one million vacant homes and reinforcing mass unemployment and capital misallocations in the economy. For German policymakers, housing programs became structural economic problems detrimental to the manufacturing-based, export-oriented economy. In 2006, Chancellor Angela Merkel's grand coalition sacrificed major social housing and homeownership programs, despite their popularity, in the name of reviving the German export-oriented economy.