Weimar Germany not only expropriated housing and imposed strict rent control but also: "removed restrictions against attic and basement dwellings, and relaxed zoning and construction standards." - Silverman, Housing Crisis in Weimar Germany (same source Jacobin is using).
https://twitter.com/jacobin/status/1397004490260185091
The Jacobin article is good but the greater picture about the aggressive rent controls and buy outs by the state was that these were stop-gap measures to alleviate the housing shortage and again, that the failure of Capitalism was the inability to produce *enough* housing.
The Social Democrats used the 1924 rent tax to subsidize housing construction and thus all non-partially or fully subsidized housing by contractors was dwarfed by the high density standards which private developers couldn't build w/o public assistance. 
The Germany Building Societies were really cool, like co-housing groups that constructed their own housing with public assistance but were exempt from rent control unlike private developers.
But also it wasn't totally sustainable. This put cities in a lot of debt and by 1931 many cities couldn't sustain the public-financing programs. Still, the leftist reforms were good ideas predicated on preserving communities while solving the problem outlined here.
Leftists economists understood that the cause of the housing shortage and subsequent high rents in new development was primarily fueled by excessive construction costs and land costs under the Imperials.
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