Rate has been increasing since 2007
One in ten people in Germany live in cramped conditions
April 7, 2024, 12:07 a.m
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High rents, limited supply: Young adults or single parents in particular are increasingly unable to afford more rooms as their families grow. Eleven percent of people in Germany now live in overcrowded apartments. BSW boss Wagenknecht accuses the government of failing.
More and more people in Germany live in cramped living conditions. This emerges from a response from the Federal Statistical Office to a request from Bundestag member and party leader Sahra Wagenknecht, which was submitted to the Editorial Network Germany (RND). Accordingly, more than one in ten people in Germany live in an overcrowded apartment (11.3 percent). That’s more than 9.5 million people, which means another increase compared to 2022 (11.2 percent), 2021 (10.6 percent) and 2020 (10.2 percent).
Last year, the proportion of those affected among children up to 18 years of age (18.5 percent) was almost six times as high as among older people over 65 years of age (3.3 percent). Single parents and their children often live in cramped living spaces. The overcrowding rate in cities is also significantly higher than in rural areas. The authority relies on EU data on income and living conditions. According to the Federal Statistical Office, the number of people with cramped living space in Germany has been rising continuously since at least 2007. An apartment is considered overcrowded if it has too few rooms in relation to the number of people.
However, the specification of a number of square meters as a guideline for overcrowding varies in the regulations from state to state. In Berlin, for example, every adult should have nine square meters, and each child should have six square meters. In Hesse, nine square meters per person is the standard, whether adults or children. Under tenancy law, overcrowding of an apartment is considered to be a breach of contract. The landlord can theoretically demand that this situation be ended. The greater the housing shortage and the higher the rents, the more explosive this situation becomes.
Wagenknecht: Scholz should fire Geywitz
Wagenknecht particularly accused Federal Construction Minister Klara Geywitz of failing. “Geywitz has failed miserably. The Chancellor should fire her,” she told the RND. “Our country needs a realignment of housing policy with a tough rent cap and more non-profit housing construction,” she said. The federal government has also “not even come close to achieving” its new building plans. The traffic light coalition had aimed to create 400,000 new apartments in this country every year, including 100,000 social housing, but missed the target.
“In view of the emergency, the state must intervene rigorously in the housing market and build publicly financed buildings or support non-profit providers with low-interest loans,” Wagenknecht continued. The rent cap should freeze rents at the level of two years ago for a longer period of time, demanded the former Left parliamentary group leader, who now heads the BSW group in the Bundestag.