Housing policy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Housing policy (also housing policy ) is, in the narrower sense, public policy that focuses on housing . The term politics describes on the one hand the concrete intervening action and on the other hand the objectives on which this action is based. The means chosen to achieve the goals depend on the information on the basis of which planning or decisions are made. There can be conflicting goals between goals ; there may be conflicts of interest between the actors .

Goal setting

Housing policy is expressed in the regulatory intervention of the public sector in the housing market and, in terms of planning, also through urban planning and public or state-subsidized housing construction . In doing so, it applies the housing policy instruments available to it. As far as the level of action of state housing policy is concerned, in Germany it is primarily the federal and state governments that determine the legal framework. As a local actor, the municipality primarily implements federal and state law . From the point of view of urban sociology , another aspect of housing policy is of interest for understanding longer-term processes: the general action strategy on which concrete action is based.

Role of the state

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

In the understanding of social policy and in the context of services of general interest, the state has the task of ensuring a minimum supply of housing if the individual is unable to do so. There are different views on this according to political ideology and the underlying image of man . One approach to this is the principle of subsidiarity . Housing policy should, for example, solve the distribution and access problem, that is, the rent burden must also be affordable for households with low incomes. There are three areas of practical housing policy in Germany :

  1. Social protection of housing: The implementation of social protection takes place via classic instruments such as housing benefit , social housing and, more recently, the purchase of occupancy restrictions from the housing stock.
  2. Securing favorable conditions of use and offers: This includes the designation and development of building land , urban renewal and urban development measures, protection against dismissal and tax law .
  3. Home ownership policy: The promotion of owner-occupied home ownership is based in part on wealth policy principles. The “ home ownership allowance ” was created here as a legal regulation .

A special topic is the real estate transfer tax (GrESt), which has been criticized for being too low at 2% for many years. With the Annual Tax Act 1997, the tax rate for real estate transfer tax was increased from 2% to 3.5% (= + 75%). Since September 1, 2006, the federal states have been empowered to determine the tax rate themselves in accordance with Article 105, Paragraph 2a, Sentence 2 of the Basic Law . Berlin increased to 4.5%. Hamburg also increased to 4.5% on January 1, 2009. In Rhineland-Palatinate , the red-green coalition elected in 2011 decided to raise the real estate transfer tax by one and a half percentage points (= over 42%) on March 1, 2012. North Rhine-Westphalia increases the real estate transfer tax to 5% on October 1, 2011.

The following important information is missing from this article or section:
Consequences of individual measures
Help Wikipedia by researching and pasting it .

Development of housing policy

As early as the 19th century, the realization matured that the housing market should not be left to its own devices. As a result of industrialization and the resulting rural exodus , the need for housing in cities skyrocketed. There was land speculation , exorbitant rents and homelessness . State intervention was necessary for reasons of security and order, but also for reasons of health protection . The housing shortage that developed in some regions after the First World War and the economic crisis intensified government intervention in the housing market . Numerous laws to combat the housing shortage have been passed. After the Second World War - almost a quarter of the housing stock of around 18 million apartments in Germany was destroyed and more than twelve million refugees had to be accommodated - providing the population with housing became the most important task of the state. A federal housing ministry has been set up. Further milestones were the First (1950) and the Second Housing Act (1956), with which the three segments of state intervention (publicly funded social housing, tax-privileged and privately financed housing) were placed on a legal basis. The Second Housing Act is the basis of social housing policy to this day.

The housing policy of the GDR revealed strong state regulation of construction activity and rental prices . For political and economic reasons, the new building in industrially manufactured panel construction was favored and at the same time the preservation of the old building fabric was neglected. Owner- occupied residential property could only be appropriated to a very limited extent. The rents were kept low for socio-political reasons. The rents frozen at the 1936 level applied to old buildings . The rents for new buildings were set centrally in 1981 and averaged EUR 0.45 per square meter of living space. The rents were therefore neither oriented towards residential value nor cost-covering. The level of cost recovery through rental income was only ten to 15 percent. As a result, many houses were neglected due to lack of repairs and the old town areas became depopulated.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Eekhoff, Housing Policy (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993).
  2. ↑ www.siedlerbund.de
  3. ↑ nrw.de
  4. ^ Winfried Michels, "Wohnungspolitik West", in: Lexikon Soziale Marktwirtschaft (Paderborn: UTB, 2002), p. 473 f.
  5. ↑ J. Behrendt, The transformation of a centrally administered economic system into a social market economy using the example of the housing industry, dissertation at the economics and social science faculty of the University of Cologne (1992).

literature

  • Dorothea Berger-Thimme: Housing question and welfare state. Studies of the beginnings of state housing policy in Germany (1873–1918). Peter Lang et al., Frankfurt am Main et al. 1976, ISBN 3-261-01986-7 ( European university publications . Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences 68).
  • Stefan Krätke, Fritz Schmoll: The local state and social restructuring in: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 15 (4). 1991, 542-552
  • Jürgen Mümken: Capitalism and Housing. A contribution to the history of housing policy in the mirror of capitalist development dynamics and social struggles. Edition AV, Lich / Hessen 2006, ISBN 3-936049-64-5 .
  • Eric H. Monkkonen: The Local State. Public Money and American Cities , Stanford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8047-2412-1 .
  • Rainer Praetorius (Ed.): Vigilant and cooperative? The local state as a security producer , Nomos-Verl.-Ges., Baden-Baden 2002, ISBN 3-7890-7793-3 .
  • Björn Egner, Nikolaos Georgakis, Hubert Heinelt, Reinhart C. Bartholomäi: Housing Policy in Germany. Positions - Actors - Instruments. Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-932736-12-5 .