Rising rents, a lack of apartments, stalled new construction: when it comes to housing policy, unions and tenants’ associations give the traffic light a bad report – and are calling for a fundamental change in direction.
After two years in government of the traffic light coalition, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and the German Tenants’ Association draw a bleak housing policy balance sheet. They called on the federal and state governments in Berlin to launch a housing construction offensive worth billions. Around a third of the 21 million renter households in Germany are currently overburdened by their housing costs.
DGB board member Stefan Körzell attested to the traffic light in construction policy being “two years of federal political discouragement”. The President of the German Tenants’ Association, Lukas Siebenkotten, demanded: “There has to be a push, actually a double or triple push, so that this important issue of affordable housing for everyone can finally be tackled sensibly.”
Körzell demanded that the federal and state governments invest around 13 billion euros annually in a national housing offensive. Municipalities would have to be strengthened and profits generated by real estate trading would have to be skimmed off.
Hundreds of thousands of apartments are missing
“It was stated in the coalition agreement that we wanted to create 400,000 apartments a year, 100,000 of which would be publicly funded,” said Siebenkotten. “We actually managed less than 300,000,” he said, looking at the years 2021 and 2022. “And for the publicly funded ones, only around 25,000, a quarter of what we had planned.”
In 2023, there will be a lack of more than 700,000 affordable rental apartments in Germany – the housing construction targets set by 2025 cannot therefore be achieved, according to a jointly submitted paper. In addition, the rents of advertised existing apartments in 2022 rose by an average of four percent nationwide compared to the previous year – to an average of 9.66 euros per square meter net, and in large cities to 12.23 euros. The rent will also continue to rise in existing tenancies, by 5.5 percent between 2020 and 2023.
Economic policy problem
Today you can hardly afford to move to a big city for a job if your employer doesn’t pay for the apartment, complained Körzell. At the same time, employers complained about a shortage of skilled workers due to a lack of affordable rental apartments. The housing crisis is a socio-political scandal that is increasingly becoming an economic policy problem for Germany.
“We now need a rent freeze in existing properties and an offensive for affordable construction and living, otherwise we are threatened with massive social upheaval,” demanded Siebenkotten. The rent price spiral is clearly gaining momentum.
Source: Stern
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