Number of the month of March: 48

The Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community (BMI) recently published a 48-point checklist entitled "The Housing Initiative and its Implementation Status." This followed a press conference on February 23, 2021, at which the Federal Government presented an assessment of its measures to combat the housing shortage since the so-called Housing Summit in September 2018. Each of the measures "promised" at that time is meticulously marked as "fulfilled" in the checklist. So, is the housing question now solved? In 48 steps?

Thanks to Germany's current COVID-19 policies, we've become accustomed to frequent "summits" whose meager results are quickly overtaken by reality. A glance at the Federal Ministry of the Interior's checklist for evaluating the "housing summit" evokes unpleasant associations with various COVID-19 decisions: the bureaucratic minutiae of the proposed solutions simply fail to address the magnitude of the problem at hand.

Experts largely seem to agree: The package of measures, grandly announced in 2018 under the label "housing offensive," was anything but a success. The goal was supposed to be to quickly create more housing, make apartments affordable again for a majority of the population, and reduce construction costs. Some of the measures taken to achieve these goals, such as the child benefit for home construction, can certainly be considered a success. Overall, however, even 48 ticked-off items on a checklist don't change the fact that fundamental problems persist or have even worsened.

Too little housing is being built, and what is built is often insufficient to meet actual needs. In major cities, it's not the availability of housing that has increased, but rather the purchase and rental prices of real estate, despite the pandemic. Homeownership remains out of reach for a majority of the population. New construction is hampered by a severe shortage of building land, and construction costs, already very high compared to other European countries, continue to rise. Yet the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) speaks of an "exceptionally successful track record" for its housing initiative. And there's the checklist to prove it.

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