Frankfurt: “Left-wing” administration privatizes social housing
Green renovation regulations, combined with ever-present austerity, are leading to an affordable rental crisis in Germany.
Until a few years ago, cities like Frankfurt purchased apartments using the right of first refusal for public utility, and then rented them out at socially acceptable prices. Unfortunately this is no longer possible, in fact the municipalities no longer have the money even to renovate them, so they are forced to privatize them. Even social assistance in Germany is sacrificed on the altar of savings on the one hand and evolution for energy saving.
The houses must be privatized even if the municipality is left-wing
Therefore, according to the German administrative criterion, it is no longer possible to buy houses from private individuals to give them as social rent. Indeed, it is also necessary to sell existing houses to save money and not carry out renovations. The problem is that, technically, the municipal properties could not be sold, so we will be content to hand over, under concession, the surface rights to private companies who will then renovate and put the house back on the market, obviously not at a reduced rent .
The coalition in Frankfurt is made up of the Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt, so it presents itself as a strongly left-wing coalition, and says it is aware of the problem. To resolve it, it will be proposed to eliminate the remaining empty places, putting more pressure on the poor in social rented homes, and to entrust their management… to a private company which, among other things, does not even exist, but will have to be set up by private individuals , ad hoc. Luckily there is the left of the Greens and the SPD in government, who knows what the conservatives could have done.
The public company that takes care of the properties complains that it is unable to take care of all the publicly owned properties. Obviously no one is thinking about strengthening it, so the left's solution is to sell to private individuals. Then we shouldn't be surprised if, even on that side, alternative movements arise that want to contest the left that has consolidated over the last 30 years. If this is the left, what is the difference with the right?
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The article Frankfurt: “Left-wing” administration privatizes social housing comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/francoforte-lamministrazione-di-sinistra-privatizza-ledilizia-sociale/ on Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:30:13 +0000.