The creation of affordable housing and climate-friendly construction are considered important tasks. In order to combine the two, more money should be made available by the federal government.
The federal government wants to significantly increase funding for climate-friendly new construction projects due to the high demand. There should be a total of 888 million euros in addition. This emerges from a letter from Finance Secretary Florian Toncar to the Budget Committee, which is available to the dpa and was first reported on by tagesschau.de.
“Our new building subsidy is a success. There is a lot of demand for it, which is why I have advocated an increase,” said Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD). The program is now secured until the end of the year. “The federal government’s new construction subsidy makes an important contribution to the creation of affordable housing and climate-friendly construction,” emphasized Geywitz. This would create incentives to invest in construction despite inflation, higher interest rates and high energy prices.
New funding program from June
The new building subsidy consists of two programs. Anyone who builds in a climate-friendly manner has been able to get loans of up to 150,000 euros on favorable terms since March. New construction and the first purchase of energy-efficient buildings with the Efficiency House 40 standard are funded. This means that the energy requirement of the property may not exceed 40 percent of that of a standard house. Those who also meet the stricter quality requirements for sustainable buildings can get more support.
A support program for families with low and medium incomes is also scheduled to start on June 1st. The Budget Committee is now to initially approve overplanned costs of up to 419 million euros. 469 million are added from another pot.
Because of the strict requirements, it was not foreseen that the funding would be used so extensively, Toncar wrote to the committee. The additional money is necessary because otherwise there is a risk of a funding stop in the next few weeks. That could destroy the confidence of the public in the seriousness of the climate policy goals of the federal government.
Source: Stern
