Apartment talk at Lanz
Palmer proposes special funds for social housing
By Marko Schlichting
April 24, 2024, 4:13 a.m
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The federal government has a problem: there are too few apartments. Building Minister Geywitz explains what she wants to do about it in the ZDF talk show “Markus Lanz”. Tübingen’s mayor Palmer would like to build, but is disturbed by a protected bird – or is he?
“It’s just hard to do anything in this country because someone always comes along and immediately thinks why it doesn’t work.” That’s Boris Palmer’s conclusion. The mayor of Tübingen feels this particularly strongly. Because he lacks apartments. The city of Tübingen can build a hundred new apartments every year. But around 1,500 people are still looking for accommodation there. And it should be cheap too. If the state didn’t help with subsidies, the rental price there would be twenty euros per square meter.
Federal Construction Minister Klara Geywitz from the SPD knows the problem. There is currently a shortage of around 600,000 apartments across Germany. Although there is empty living space, it is where it is not needed. The federal government originally had a goal when it took office in 2021: it wanted to build 400,000 new apartments every year. Last year there were 265,000. This year the number is likely to be similar. Housing construction could be another flop for the traffic light coalition. “We have a problem,” Geywitz openly admits on the ZDF talk show “Markus Lanz” on Tuesday evening.
The federal government’s housing plans
The housing market is dealing with two crises, says Geywitz. On the one hand, there is the ECB’s jump in interest rates. In addition, construction in Germany is too slow and too expensive. Nothing will change in the short term. That’s why the federal government has launched a housing benefit reform so that low-income earners can also afford the currently high rents: the state is helping them with this. At the same time, social housing in particular should be revived. The states will receive 3.15 billion euros from the federal budget this year.
That’s not enough for Boris Palmer. The city of Tübingen would need equity capital to build new apartments, and it doesn’t have that. Other communities are in a similar situation. That’s why he suggests: “We actually need something like the special fund for the Bundeswehr, which can be used to specifically strengthen the equity of the non-profit and municipal housing construction companies with federal funds so that we are once again in a position to push forward with new construction.” You can do a lot in Germany with a special fund of 100 billion euros, says Palmer.
Another big problem for Palmer is bureaucracy, which the federal government actually set out to reduce. There are already a lot of building laws, and thirty new ones are added every five years, Palmer complains. What this bureaucracy can lead to is made clear by a farce that has been bothering the city of Tübingen for several years.
The bird of Tübingen
There is a university hospital in Tübingen. Three million people depend on it. Lives are saved there every day. To ensure that it stays that way, the central clinic building is to be expanded. Money would be available. The state of Baden-Württemberg has allocated the necessary 250 million euros in its budget. Palmer: “We would like to get started. I would also like to sign the building permit. But then I’ll go to prison.”
One day an ornithologist will be treated at the university hospital. And he suddenly hears a bird chirping, and he wasn’t expecting that. Because it is a nightjar. And it is strictly protected. It turns out: A male nightjar has chosen the roofs of the university hospital to sing his song on them. The area of the university clinic is declared a nightjar habitat and building is prohibited.
Unless you create an alternative home for the bird. It’s just stupid: the bird is an “open country species” and doesn’t like trees. In order to make the university hospital expansion possible, ten hectares of local recreation area would have to be cut down, around a thousand trees. They would have to be replanted in another place. But that doesn’t exist in Tübingen.
“Then this is nightjar’s expectation land.”
Then comes the year 2023. The nightjar suddenly disappeared and no longer appears. The problem seems solved, thinks Palmer. But he is wrong: “The conservationists say that if there was ever a nightjar, even a male specimen, that did not breed and left no successors, and even if there is no one else far and wide, then that is a nightjar expectant land.” Even though the bird is gone, the city of Tübingen has to act as if it was still there, said Palmer. The trees would still have to go.
Palmer’s solution: He asked Prime Minister Kretschmann to find an official who would issue a death certificate for the nightjar. Palmer himself would be committing a criminal offense if he found a special regulation and signed a building permit. “The bird is so strictly protected that criminal law prevents human reason from succeeding.”
But there could be a happy ending during this legislative period, promises Geywitz. She wants to create biotopes in which endangered animals from several cities are to be released into the wild. In addition, her ministry is currently drafting a law according to which so-called compensatory and replacement measures such as the reforestation of deforested areas cannot only take place at the construction site. Geywitz: “Then Mr. Palmer can arrange an exchange of land with someone else he knows well. They can do that.”