Wednesday 20, September
New figures show Berlin will miss social housing targets
It may not come as a shocker to hear that housing construction in Berlin is making painfully slow progress. This is particularly true when it comes to the construction of social housing by state-owned real estate companies, who built just 624 new apartments between January and June this year. In August, the SPD Construction Senator admitted that their 2023 goals would be missed.
Rather than speeding up construction or (heaven forbid) cutting red tape, the Senate Department for Urban Development is merely revising their construction forecast – 1,400 fewer apartments will be completed by 2026 than previously planned. The reasons they’ve given are “unplanned investment costs, insufficient construction capacity… as well as missing documents or delays in determining the planning law”.
In their coalition agreement, the CDU and SPD agreed to build 20,000 new apartments annually by 2026, 5,000 of which are meant to be social housing. The coalition government has recently expanded housing subsidies in order to offer further incentives for private investors, but approvals for new social housing are progressing slowly, with funding approved for just 151 apartments by the beginning of September. The wait for affordable Berlin housing continues.
