Municipal housing company
Municipal housing companies are companies that, like privately run housing companies , are active in the housing industry. Your tasks are in the construction , management, administration and marketing of your own residential real estate. It is classified as a municipal housing company on the basis of the municipality's involvement under company law. Related to the communal housing companies are the public housing companies in which the state or the federal government is involved in accordance with corporate law principles.
The approximately 740 municipal and public housing companies with their over 2.5 million apartments give more than 5 million people a home. Due to the municipal and public participation, they cooperate particularly closely with the public sector and in the area of urban development. The municipal and public housing companies have merged in the GdW Bundesverband deutscher Wohnungs- und Immobilienunternehmen e. V. and its regional associations. The first municipal housing companies came into being in the 19th century. As it is today, the municipal housing companies formed when the Federal Republic of Germany was founded.
meaning
Providing the population with living space is one of the most important tasks of municipal services of general interest . Although the cities and municipalities are only obliged to house homeless households according to the principles of regulatory law, the basic task of the state to ensure the supply of the population with affordable and adequate housing is derived from Art. 20 and Art. 28 of the Basic Law . Even after the First World War , municipal housing companies were increasingly founded in times of extreme housing shortage. The combination of public ownership and entrepreneurship in a private-sector legal form implemented in them is particularly suitable for coping with the associated challenges that arise from this supply mandate from the municipality and the state:
- The municipal and public housing companies have the private legal form and thus entrepreneurial options that are closed to an authority.
- While authorities are managed according to the principles of public service law and the rules of municipal accounting , the municipal and public housing companies are operationally capable of acting according to business criteria and are subject to the normative company law standards with regard to accounting and auditing.
- You can therefore also take on difficult and unconventional tasks that result from the municipal supply mandate in an economically efficient manner and with social competence.
- The municipal and public housing companies supply broad sections of the population without excluding those who cannot assert themselves on the free housing markets on their own.
- The portfolios of the municipal housing companies are assets of the municipalities, which can also open up financial leeway for other municipal tasks.
- Due to the state participation and the associated close connection to the local decision-makers, central questions of urban planning or spatial planning can be answered in close coordination and then implemented.
Municipal and public housing companies are particularly important for the integration of social marginalized groups , such as immigrants, the homeless and other population groups who would otherwise have no chances on the housing markets.
Business areas
The business activity of municipal housing companies is the administration of rental apartments against rent. Other business areas can be the rental of commercial units, garages or parking spaces. However, many housing companies also offer third-party management of rented apartments from other owners and of condominiums.
The special business area of municipal housing companies in particular is the management of specially managed properties, such as retirement homes, assisted living , the property development business and construction supervision .
Municipal housing associations in the new federal states
In 1990, most of the apartments on the territory of the former GDR were owned by state-owned housing companies. The Unification Treaty brought fundamental changes to the property structure, tenancy law and the allocation of apartments. The state-owned companies in the housing industry passed into the ownership of the municipality when the old liabilities were taken over. Old liabilities are obligations from loans that were taken up until June 30, 1990 in the context of publicly owned and cooperative housing construction in the GDR. The debts amounted to almost 60 billion DM or an average of around 300 DM / m². In the majority of the municipalities, housing associations were established, to which the municipal housing stock was transferred. The Old Debt Aid Act came into force as early as 1993 . Under this law, housing associations and cooperatives could be exempted from liabilities that exceeded 150 DM / m² and from the interest accruing up to that point if they privatized 15% of their holdings in individuals by 2003. Otherwise, all old debts had to be paid by yourself. Since the companies were heavily burdened by the remaining old debts and now also by new debts and the vacancy rate continued to rise, the law was changed in 2001 so that housing companies with a vacancy rate of over 15 percent were waived the old debts of demolished buildings. So there was a promotion of the demolition, combined with the remission of the old debts.