The Transition in Social Housing in Germany – New Challenges and New Players After 60 Years

Abstract

Social housing has a long history in Germany from the first still existing social housing ever, the “Fuggerei” in Augsburg (founded in 1521), over the last 100 years from the end of World War I to today’s situation where the need in social housing has increased while the number of housing projects and the number of existing apartments in this program has decreased or ended. Socio-economic changes like demographic evolution, more single households, greater working abilities in bigger cities and an unforeseen highly increased number of migrants within Europe mostly but also from other countries led to the need of affordable housing for a growing number of people who are not able to care for their housing needs in their own responsibility. This is especially true for bigger cities, where the offer of affordable housing is nearly non-existing any more. The family Fugger, a trade and banking dynasty at their time, established a very modern housing concept, providing good and healthy living space for their workers. In 2018 now some trade companies, discounters (ALDI, LIDL, Norma) and IKEA announce to combine their interest in sales in the inner cities with the municipal interest of redensification of existing housing areas and conversion to ecological urban reconstructuring.