AfD on housing

The AfD wants to provide social housing for homeless people. To do so, it wants to use vacant housing containers that municipalities originally set up for asylum seekers.

More people have no home. The AfD wants to give them a place to live. Many cities have empty housing containers. Homeless people should be able to live there.

The platform names the effects of COVID measures and the rental market as causes of rising homelessness. It says hundreds of containers stand empty in many municipalities because their former residents have since found regular housing. These containers are to be open permanently to homeless people and those temporarily without housing.

The AfD wants to make buying a home easier and cut the property transfer tax in North Rhine-Westphalia from 6.5 to 3.5 percent. It also wants allowances for first-time buyers of owner-occupied homes and more support, including for housing cooperatives.

The AfD wants more people to be able to buy their own home. Buyers pay a tax when they buy. This tax should drop from 6.5 to 3.5 percent. First-time buyers should pay less tax.

According to the platform, the proposed rate of 3.5 percent matches that of Bavaria and Saxony. Home ownership is also meant to support private retirement savings. Support under the social housing program should be expanded and eligibility thresholds lowered where needed. Cooperatives should get priority access to publicly owned land.

The AfD wants to simplify building regulations and limit them to what is necessary. In particular, climate protection requirements it considers excessive should go, so that building becomes simpler and cheaper.

The AfD wants fewer rules for building. Above all, rules on climate protection should go. Permits should be faster. This should make building cheaper.

Permit procedures are to be improved and sped up. Building regulations should cover only what is necessary. The platform justifies this with the aim of lowering construction costs and ending price increases caused by policy.

The AfD rejects the Mietpreisbremse (rent brake) and rent caps and wants more new construction through favorable conditions. Low-income tenants should get more support through Wohngeld (housing benefit), because the party sees social housing construction as costly and reaching too few people.

The AfD does not want state limits on rents. Instead, more homes should be built. People with little money should get more housing benefit. Life in the countryside should also become more attractive.

The platform says social housing leads to misallocation and high costs. Small towns and rural areas should become more attractive through good infrastructure and jobs; fewer vacancies there should ease pressure in urban centers. The AfD also wants more affordable housing suited to older people. Young families and seniors should live closer together to prevent loneliness in old age.