Residential City Urban Development and Housing Association Hesse

Wohnstadt Stadtentwicklungs- und Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Hessen mbH
legal form	Company with limited liability
founding	1920
Seat	Kassel , Germany
management	Thomas Hain, Monika Fontaine-Kretschmer, Constantin Westphal
Number of employees	approx. 300 (2006), then staff transfer by the parent company Nassauische Heimstätte
Branch	Real estate industry
Website	www.wohnstadt.de

The Wohnstadt Stadtentwicklungs- und Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Hessen is a housing and development company with a majority stake in the State of Hesse . Together with Nassauische Heimstätte , which is part of the corporate group , it manages around 63,000 apartments in Hesse and Thuringia, making it one of the ten largest housing companies in Germany. As a development and redevelopment agency, she takes on tasks in project and urban development for public and private clients and provides real estate advice.

history

The legal forerunner of the residential town, the Hessische Heimstätte , was founded in Kassel in 1920 as one of twelve housing welfare associations of the Prussian state. The publicly subsidized housing construction was intended to remedy the acute housing shortage in the Kassel administrative district and the Free State of Waldeck . At the same time, the Hessische Heimstätte assumed important control functions as an organ of state housing policy.

Pre-war period

Initially, the company was primarily dedicated to the state-subsidized construction of small settlements and homes in the north Hessian communities. Despite the difficult economic conditions of the early 1920s due to inflation, over 300 apartments were completed, mainly in the Eschwege district and in Marburg. A significant increase in construction activity began with the increase in subsidies from the apportionment of house interest tax : By the end of the Weimar Republic , the company had built around 6,500 apartments at various locations in Northern Hesse, some of which were provided by the subsidiary Hessenheim Wohnungsbaugesellschaft (later Kurhessen Wohnungsbaugesellschaft) was farmed. From 1927 the Hessische Heimstätte had its own urban planning department, which took on the tasks of development and land use planning for the communities.

Under the National Socialist regime

Initially, the housing policy of the National Socialists was characterized by an idealization of the small town and the agricultural state. That changed with the armaments industry, which expanded from 1936 onwards: The rapidly growing working-class cities required affordable housing. Instead of small settlements and private homes, there was a multi-storey row development in a standardized and therefore more cost-effective design. The Hessische Heimstätte implemented these requirements as an organ of the public housing industry. She drew up the plans for the Mattenberg housing estate, designed for 3,000 apartments in the Kassel district of Oberzwehren, which was intended to create affordable living space for the workers of the aircraft engine manufacturer Henschel. The same applied to Lohfelden, east of Kassel, where the districts of Crumbach and Ochshausen were combined with apartments for the workers of the Fieseler Flugzeugwerke to form the new district. The building projects could only be partially realized. With the outbreak of the war, residential construction almost came to a standstill. The bombing of German cities created a new need: From 1943 onwards, the Hessische Heimstätte had standardized emergency accommodation, so-called makeshift homes , built using Polish and Russian forced laborers .

reconstruction

The situation in the area of activity of the Hessische Heimstätte, especially in Kassel, was characterized after the end of the war by an acute shortage of living space as a result of war-related damage. The basis for the reconstruction was the housing emergency program of the Hessian state government from 1946, which propagated the small settlement in the countryside as a model for new building projects. As a particularly successful example, the "Eichhof" residential area in Bad Hersfeld , built by the Hessian Heimstätte, received first prize in the state competition for the best small settlement in 1958. In contrast to the funding policy of other federal states, Hesse linked the integration of displaced persons and refugees with its state development plan ( Hessenplan ) in the 1950s . Part of this strategy was the conversion of former armament sites to civilian living quarters. The two explosives plants of DAG and WASAG near Allendorf in the Marburg district thus became the nucleus for today's Stadtallendorf with around 21,000 inhabitants. The Hessische Heimstätte also made a significant contribution to the creation of new living space in the cities. In Kassel, several hundred two- to three-story apartments were built according to plans from the prewar period, for example in the river district in Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe. At the end of 1956, the reconstruction in Kassel was largely complete. The Hessische Heimstätte had built 1,495 apartments there by this time.

Urban renewal and development

With the increasing demand for housing in the post-war period and the release of building land prices from 1960, the pressure on the city centers to exploit grew: apartments and small businesses gradually moved to the cheaper suburbs. New districts with a stock of several thousand apartments emerged, such as in the Fulda-Aschenberg or Marburg-Richtsberg settlements planned by the Hessian Heimstätte. Against this background, the focus of the company's activities shifted from residential construction to urban planning and development in the 1960s . An additional field of activity emerged from the Urban Development Promotion Act of 1971: As the recognized redevelopment agency of the State of Hesse, the Hessische Heimstätte was henceforth involved in the urban renewal of numerous North and Central Hessian municipalities such as Arolsen , Hünfeld , Immenhausen , Kirchhain , Sontra and Wetter .

Public contract today

A change in the law in 1990 revoked the non-profit status of the Heimstätten . For financial and organizational reasons, the Hessische Heimstätte then merged in 1994 with its subsidiary Kurhessen Wohnungsbaugesellschaft, which had been responsible for the management of the Group's own apartments. Since then, the company has operated as Wohnstadt Stadtentwicklungs- und Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Hessen mbH.

From 1990 the residential city supported the neighboring state of Thuringia with its own branch in Weimar . The focus of the on-site tasks was in the area of urban planning and renewal, for example in Apolda , Gotha and Naumburg / Saale .

Business activities in the 1990s were characterized by urban planning, renovation measures, the conversion of disused military and industrial areas, and the maintenance and modernization of the company's own portfolio. In 2005 the two Hessian housing and development companies Nassauische Heimstätte and Wohnstadt merged to form a corporate group.

Corporate group

In 2005, Nassauische Heimstätte acquired shares from the State of Hesse in the residential city Stadtentwicklungs- und Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Hessen mbH, Kassel. With an inventory of around 63,000 residential units and 29 branches, branches and offices, the Nassauische Heimstätte / Wohnstadt group is present throughout Hesse and parts of Thuringia.

The Kassel-based subsidiary MET Medien-Energie-Technik Versorgungs- und Betreuungsgesellschaft mbH, which specializes in the provision of communication and heating technology as well as real estate management services, also belongs to the new group of companies.

Shareholder structure

The Wohnstadt Stadtentwicklungs- und Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Hessen mbH is majority owned by the Nassauische Heimstätte Wohnungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft and other public shareholders. Originally founded to alleviate the general lack of living space in the region between Kassel in the north and Marburg and Fulda in the south, today's focus of business activity is on privately financed and subsidized housing construction, the conversion of military, communal and industrial fallow land and advising cities and municipalities, but also commercial enterprises, in questions of urban development and real estate management.

The shareholders of the residential city: Nassauische Heimstätte Wohnungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, SV Sparkassen-Versicherung Gebäudeversicherung Baden-Württemberg AG, City of Kassel, Schwalm-Eder-Kreis, Kasseler Sparkasse, Sparkasse Werra-Meißner, Sparkasse Marburg-Biedenkopf, Sparkasse Bad Hersfeld-Rotenburg , Non-profit housing GmbH of the City of Marburg, City of Kirchhain, GAGFAH GmbH Essen, Chamber of Crafts Kassel, City of Bad Wildungen, City of Großalmerode, City of Hessisch Lichtenau, City of Homberg, City of Wolfhagen, Sparkasse Fulda, own shares

Corporate divisions

The Nassauische Heimstätte / Wohnstadt group of companies divides its business activities into the areas of living, building and developing.

membership

The Nassauische Heimstätte / Wohnstadt group is a member of the following working groups and associations (selection):

Working Group of Large Housing Companies (AGW)
Federal Association of State and Development Companies (BVLEG)
German Association for Housing, Urban Development and Regional Planning e. V.
GdW Federal Association of German Housing and Real Estate Companies V.
Association of the Southwest German Housing Industry V.
Central Real Estate Committee V.
Competence center large estates e. V.

Web links

swell

Helmut Feußner, Friedhelm Fischer: From the 'home' to the residential town - transformations of a company between the 'Weimar Republic' and the 21st century, Kassel: university press 2008.
Annual report of the Nassauische Heimstätte / Wohnstadt Group 2008.