Flood of applications for subsidised housing
For years now, the city has been registering a steady increase in demand for subsidised housing and housing subsidies. The Corona pandemic has now made the situation even worse.This is shown by figures presented by the Social Department to the Social Committee. According to these, the Office for Housing and Migration received around 82 percent more applications for housing subsidies in 2020 than in the previous year. Since July 2020, the city has also recorded an average monthly increase of around 800 applications for subsidized housing.
By the end of 2021, more than 40,000 applications are forecast. By way of comparison, five years ago there were just over 23,000 applications.However, the flood of applications also means that the Social Welfare Department can hardly keep up with the processing. "The processing time for housing subsidies is currently around eight months per application," says social affairs officer Dorothee Schiwy.
A similar picture emerges in the area of registration and allocation of subsidized housing: According to the city, the current increase in applications can hardly be handled here. Therefore, as a countermeasure, the Social Welfare Department has increased the registration and Munich Model notices from one to now two years. This applies to households in the lowest income bracket of the respective application type and affects a good four-fifths of all registered households.
In order to be able to counter the increasingly scarce supply of affordable housing, the Social Welfare Department has been demanding from the federal government for years reform of the rent index, the introduction of a land price brake and the enactment of an ordinance so that the approval proviso for the conversion of rental apartments into owner-occupied apartments can apply throughout the city.
To speed up the process of housing subsidies, the Social Welfare Department has also proposed a number of administrative simplifications to the Social Welfare Committee, which the state capital is to submit to the responsible Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Housing via the German Association of Cities.
Photo by Tim Meyer
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