I often chat on German problems with affordable housing. This morning, an N-TV article came up and covered it with another prospective.
There are seven cities mentioned in this article: Frankfurt, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Koln, Munich and Stuttgart.
So, a family with a net income of 2,168 Euro a month....can barely afford something of 70 square meters within these seven cities. The rough average is that you'd have to spend 760 Euro to get something in the right size.
The option of moving? The article talks about that, and it's become highly impractical. I think this goes into several areas: you might end up in a new building which suddenly comes up on a renovation program and monthly rent goes up by 50-percent when the job is done, or the distance involved in getting to work becomes a bigger problem. Just looking for or locating a decent place in the affordable range....within these seven cities....is a major task.
In highly urbanized areas....like the seven mentioned and probably another ten areas.....it's safe to say that affordable housing is now one of the top five topics that the working-class talks about. The political parties? They've gone though the rental-brake solution (with minimum improvement), talked of forcing new projects to include some affordable housing, and looked at adding new suburbs out on the far end of towns. Unlike Vienna which has a lot of government built and run housing.....most German cities don't have that type of situation.
This population decrease? The birth-rate would indicate that within the next two decades.....roughly 12-million Germans won't exist any longer, and one might get the idea that this smaller Germany scene would help in this affordable housing issue. However, the bulk of jobs today, and for the foreseeable future....are in urbanized environments.
If you asked me to look ahead at the 2021 national election in Germany....I'm guessing that this affordable housing issue will be one of the top three discussions going on for the election.
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