Hundreds of thousands of unemployed tenants under pressure

While state agencies will be responsible for the payment of a minimum welfare income, municipalities will be responsible to pay the whole housing costs. But the municipalities don’t have that money. According to the associations of local authorities the total deficit is 5 billion Euro. Up to now the government was not able to propose a financial solution and at the same time it becomes more and more obvious that the introduction of the new law will result in chaos, because neither the IT-systems nor the administration has been prepared so far.

There are daily debates in the news papers.

Further more, there still is now regulation about the housing support for the unemployed. Tenants Associations fear that they will introduce the same or worse – regulations already introduced for the welfare people. This would mean that the local authorities will force the unemployed inhabitants to reduce their housing costs by moving to cheaper flats. Families, children& will be forced to leave their neighborhood (it is already happening in the welfare case). We see it as a violation of the right to housing and as a direct state action to establish social exclusion within rich Germany.

Source: Knut Unger