Apartment talk at Maischberger
“We build far too expensively and for far too long”
By Marko Schlichting
September 28, 2023, 5:03 a.m
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The federal government wanted to build 400,000 new apartments annually during this legislative period. At Maischberger, Federal Construction Minister Geywitz announces the obvious: This won’t work.
The federal government will not achieve its target of 400,000 new apartments per year in this legislative period. This is what Federal Construction Minister Clara Geywitz from the SPD says on ARD. “I’m afraid that’s the case,” said the minister. The CDU politician Thomas Heilmann even goes one step further. He believes that there will not be 400,000 apartments per year until 2033 at the earliest. Both politicians discussed the current crisis in the housing market with Maischberger on Wednesday evening.
In 2021, the traffic light coalition declared war on the housing crisis in its coalition agreement. Their goal at the time was 400,000 new apartments per year. She is far from that. According to a study, 285,000 new apartments were built last year and around 223,000 will be built this year. Last year, Chancellor Scholz declared that the government would create the originally planned number of new apartments during this legislative period. On Monday, Scholz discussed options for more apartments with the construction industry. The federal government now wants to support the industry with 14 points. These include, among other things, tax advantages and a higher “climate bonus”. In addition, a previously planned tightening of energy standards for new buildings is to be suspended.
“The promise was ambitious”
The federal government made the promise of 400,000 new apartments when construction was relatively easy to finance, explains Geywitz. “The promise was ambitious,” she admits. Heilmann goes even further: He calls it “careless.”
There are two problems in Germany, explains Geywitz. First of all, there is a structural problem: “We are building far too expensively and for far too long,” says Geywitz. In addition, the housing market is suffering from the interest rate increases of the last few months. “My goal is for us to get through this crisis in a stable manner,” says the minister. The government’s 14-point program is intended to generate more demand for the construction of new apartments in the industry.
One option for new apartments could be “modular construction,” said the minister. In serial or modular construction, houses are created from industrially prefabricated individual parts, similar to the prefabricated buildings in the former GDR or prefabricated houses in the old Federal Republic. “This is a form in which you can build more quickly and the floor plans are also more flexible,” says Geywitz. The Apex House in London, for example, shows how this works. With its 29 floors, it is the largest modular skyscraper in Europe. The student residence was built in just one year.
“Real can-do qualities are required”
CDU politician Heilmann does not fundamentally reject the federal government’s current plans. “There’s a lot of good stuff in there,” he says at Maischberger. Nevertheless, legal questions need to be clarified in some points. It is therefore unclear whether they can even be implemented by the next federal elections in 2025. Above all, the government should have acted earlier, says Heilmann, whose lawsuit before the Federal Constitutional Court resulted in the heating law not being passed in the Bundestag before the summer break as planned.
The CDU politician particularly praises the federal government’s departure from the originally planned insulation standards for new buildings. Geywitz explains that it was wrong that new houses were increasingly insulated and that the amount of energy used for heating was reduced, but without taking into account that CO-2 emissions during construction increased significantly. It is more important to create incentives for sustainable construction. “Then our houses may no longer be high-tech, but we can still save CO-2, albeit with simpler means.”
That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t solve the current housing problem. Above all, the costs are too high, says Geywitz: “When we reach 400,000 apartments annually depends a little on how interest rates develop.” In any case, Heilmann predicts that they will not decrease significantly. That’s why a package of measures is needed to build more apartments despite high interest rates. “We will have to come up with more creative solutions. Real can-do qualities are required,” says Heilmann.