The Monday night 'Hart aber Fair' (Hard but Fair) public forum on ARD was centered on the lack of affordable housing. I watched around 15 minutes of the show.
If you live anywhere in the shadow of Frankfurt, you know of the problem and the inability of the government to correct this mess. Even the rental brake which was built by politicians, has almost no value.
One item out of last night's episode which I hadn't grasped in the whole story told.....was brought up by Alexander Graf Lambsdorff....in fifteen years, as a society, building regulations went from 5,000 to 20,000.
When you sit down now and form the idea to build a structure....you have to contend with the 20,000 regulations. No one puts a number on the cost factor, but I would make a guess that a regular apartment building with 20 apartments built in the late 1990s....would cost double that price today. So when you look at the money being put up.....either you buy for the premium renters (way above what regular people can pay), or you build for a condo-buyer.
If you put 300 to 600 Euro for Frankfurt as rent and do a Scout-24 search on property....what you tend to find is 20 to 40 square meters of property for a single person (a small unit). 600 Euro just won't cut in the city anymore for a family. 800 to 1,000 Euro is what typically buys you a 60 to 75 square meter place (big enough for a family of three). For a lot of people, it's a costly situation.
If you were willing to live 20 kilometers outside of Frankfurt (like in Eppstein)? That's the curious change to the problem. You can find a 60-to-70 square meter apartment for 400 to 600 Euro. What you would have to accept is the train-ride into the city for your work situation (figure around 35 minutes). A lot of people want the city landscape in their face twenty-four hours a day. Eppstein? A small mountainous village that isn't that urbanized but has the S-Bahn railway station to connect into Frankfurt.
The push here by the intellectuals is that they want the German urban city governments to take over the building business and get involved in renting out affordable housing units. The problem with this suggestion is that they get saddled with the construction costs (with the 20,000 regulations attached to the bill), and then they sit and see the monthly revenue never covering the initial costs, and they have to worry about renovation costs in 30 years. It would be simple to dream up a plan for a 120 unit apartment house, but you'd have to admit it's a money-losing experience before you lay one single brick.
As for the 20,000 regulations....why?
I think the best example of this relates to the recent problem seen with the Dortmund 'Hannibal' apartment building. In the mid-1970s....this residential building was built in the suburb of Dortmund-Dorstfeld . It's roughly eight buildings.....attached....some going up to 16 floors, with 412 apartments. It's a combination of studio, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments.
Back around twenty years ago, it had reached a stage where renovation was required. They had a listing of things that needed to be done. But by 2005....the company managing this....had gone bankrupt. Some of the renovation project was done....some simply left there. Every couple of years, the property would be sold off to another company and each discovering that it was a mess and need of massive funding to wrap up the renovation.
About six weeks ago....the city fire inspectors came through and said enough....shutting down the building. Four-hundred families or individuals affected. Fix? It doesn't appear the the folks who own the building currently can pay for the renovation required. The city says it won't re-certify the building until x-number of repairs are made.
The regulations were made for cases like this and to prevent unsafe living conditions to exist.
My guess is that the court will go through a long debate and end up awarding the structure to some company, who will go and fix it to the regulations required....then raise the rent by more than double....thus ending it as an option for affordable housing. As much as the German authorities try to fix things and make them right....in the end....it will only make it worse.
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