In the upcoming days, Federal Building Minister Horst Seehofer will present the results of his “housing offensive”. The German “Social Housing Alliance” gave him poor marks at a press conference on the 5th February in Berlin. The alliance consists of
- the German Tenants’ Association
- IG BAU
- German Caritas and
- of two associations of the construction industry: “Deutscher Baustoff-Fachhandel” and “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Mauerwerks- und Wohnungsbau”
“The federal government of Germany declared to build 1.5 million apartments in the current legislative period. Germany will definitely not manage that,” said the President of the German Tenants’ Association, Lukas Siebenkotten. The situation concerning social housing in Germany must be described as “dramatic”.
“In 2020, almost 670,000 apartments were missing in Germany”, said the head of the Eduard Pestel Institute for Systems Research, Matthias Günther. At the same time, housing has become disproportionately expensive. This particularly affects households with low incomes. In Munich, the housing costs has increased by 75 percent since 2012.
The number of social housing decreased from four million in the past to around 1.1 million today. For around eight million people with disabilities, there aren’t even a million accessible flats available. The pandemic is exacerbating the situation of socially disadvantaged, elderly and disabled people. In addition to five billion euros to promote social housing, the “Social Housing Alliance” calls for office space to be converted into apartments.
Due to the growing acceptance of mobile work, many vacant offices could now be converted into apartments – supported by a special government program. The scientists identified a potential of 235,000 “ex-office apartments” by 2025.
