Housing Office
The Housing Office is a department of local government in the municipalities of the German federal states.
Jurisdiction
The Housing Office is responsible for:
- Brokerage of apartments for those looking for accommodation, in particular community-owned apartments
- Issuance of residential entitlement certificates
- Processing of applications for public subsidies for social housing in accordance with the housing subsidy laws of the federal states
- (only in some federal states) Processing and payment of housing benefit
- other tasks assigned by the federal states in connection with the management of housing
history
Housing offices are a young authority. While they had existed in Prussia since 1918, the other German states only introduced housing offices after the Second World War with the Control Council Act No. 18 . The main task of the housing authorities in the post-war period was to distribute the living space that was under forced management in the four zones of occupation.
After the division of Germany, the importance of the housing authorities in West and East developed separately from one another. In the GDR, housing offices were part of the centralized housing management and were responsible for allocating apartments to GDR citizens.
In West Germany, after the abolition of compulsory management, housing authorities were mainly responsible for the distribution of the increasing number of social housing due to social housing . After the end of social housing construction in 1990, the housing office quickly lost its importance in reunified Germany.