Good morning, dear reader,
this week starts unpleasantly for a minister of the federal government. And it might end just as badly for them.
Because today the Pestel Institute is presenting a study on the housing shortage and the consequences of high rents for the 60+ generation. A powerful group, especially at the ballot box. The institute sounded the alarm in advance: apartments for the elderly are in short supply number one, and Germany is heading for one “gray housing shortage” to. If action is not taken quickly, the country is at risk “definitely a disaster when living”.
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No less gloomy are the announcements for Thursday’s Housing Day, the annual summit of the construction industry. The housing market as a whole “at the end”the housing construction stand “at a tipping point”it says.
The announcements sound apocalyptic – and are not exaggerated. The traffic light government and above all Minister of Construction Klara Geywitz (SPD) are causing difficulties. With their analyses, the experts draw the spotlight on the biggest promise that the government has repeatedly given: to build 400,000 apartments per year, 100,000 of them social housing.
The figures are laid down in the coalition agreement, the building ministry under Geywitz was re-established specifically for this goal, resources were redistributed, and the drum was beaten loudly. Full power, so the signal, the construction of affordable housing is our top priority.
However, in the past year the goals have been missed by a long way, and the big promise has already been broken. It is estimated that only 280,000 new homes were built in 2022. The forecast for this year is even worse. Instead of new construction turbo new construction stop is announced – rows of currently planned construction projects are put on hold. It affects private individuals and large companies alike.
There are several reasons for the miserable development. Due to inflation, the interest costs for builders have risen sharply, and the Ukraine war has also caused the cost of building materials to explode. Part of being honest is that Minister of Building Geywitz has no influence on these external factors, she suddenly has to achieve the already ambitious goals under much worse conditions.
However, Geywitz does not adapt to this situation either. In interviews, the minister is currently either sounding helpless or as if it were still 2021, the year with low interest rates. As means that should bring about the big turnaround, she names nothing more than empty buzzwords: more modular construction, greater digitization, more robots and drones. So distant music of the future.
What else can help? Geywitz recommends: People should move more to the countryside and rebuild existing homes more instead of building new ones. Older people in particular should move out of houses into smaller apartments. But has she launched programs to actually trigger these movements? none.
Instead, Geywitz’ ministry has just postponed the cornerstones of an important draft law and a central funding program for the traffic light government. The proposals for the new non-profit housing scheme, which is intended to create more social housing, are now coming in June instead of March. Even coalition partners from the Greens rate that as “worrying”.
All this is far too little. In order to turn the tide on the new building, what is urgently needed now is action instead of words, new ideas, less bureaucracy – and a lot more money than Geywitz’s department currently has at its disposal. A bazooka or a turning point, as Scholz promised the economy in the corona pandemic and now in the Ukraine war of the Bundeswehr.
But so far there has been no sign of it, there are always new announcements. “2024 and 2025” if you want the number of 400,000 new apartments “approach”, says Geywitz recently. And Chancellor Scholz also emphasized that the goal remains the same. When it is to be achieved, he prefers not to commit himself.
This is absurd – and dishonest. If Scholz and Geywitz don’t unpack the construction bazooka soon, they should finally stop the 400,000 fantasy. And rather see what Bertolt Brecht already recommended: If you say A, you don’t have to say B. “He can also realise that A was wrong.”
Döpfner under fire from his own house
In the “Bild”The editors are currently trying to limit the damage. Because in messages to his leadership team, Springer boss Mathias Döpfner denied the ability of East Germans to become democratic and tried to influence political reporting in the “Bild”- Exercise newspaper. That from the “Bild” even the propagated image as an independent and always critically combative editorship suffers from this, East German politicians demanded Döpfner’s resignation and the boycott of his newspapers.
Criticism is also great in Döpfner’s own house. “What should you think of us now?”quotes the “Bild”-Zeitung one of their employees in a post over the weekend. An East German editor speaks accordingly “worst day at work”he at “Bild” ever had. Editor-in-chief Marion Horn condemns Döpfner’s news as “absolutely wrong”. In a comment, she demanded: “Actually, an apology is due, boss! “
The boss also delivers. In six short paragraphs below the inscription “Is correct!” he announces: “Die” Of course, there are no East Germans, he used his cell phone as a lightning rod in anger, his statements are clear “polemical exaggeration”. Whether that’s enough to end the big debate about Döpfner’s view of the East and the even bigger one about influencing in the “Bild”- To finish editing, may be doubted.
