SPD on housing

The SPD wants to found apprentice service organizations across the state, modeled on the existing student services organizations (Studierendenwerke). Their main task is to create low-cost housing near the training company. The party also backs a discounted Deutschlandticket for apprentices.

Students have student service organizations. They offer cheap rooms, for example. The SPD wants the same for apprentices. The rooms should be close to the company. Apprentices should also get a cheaper Deutschlandticket for public transit.

The apprentice service organizations are to be present throughout Hesse and also cover needs in rural areas. Their main job is affordable housing close to the training company, possibly in cooperation with the student services. The program expects this to make young people more willing to move elsewhere in Hesse for an apprenticeship. The SPD also advocates a reduced-price Deutschlandticket (nationwide transit pass) for apprentices.

The SPD wants more subsidized and price-reduced housing for different groups and plans to expand public housing construction to that end. Municipalities are to get more leeway through a reform of the municipal code.

The SPD wants more affordable homes to be built. The state and towns should do more for this. There should be homes for families, students, and older people. Empty offices should also become homes.

The plan covers homes for students, trainees, families, single people, and low earners, as well as accessible and age-appropriate housing. Besides new construction, the platform names converting empty offices and renovating buildings, and in rural areas smaller apartments for young people and older people living alone. The SPD also wants to support home ownership, partly as retirement provision. It aims for mixed neighborhoods with housing, shops, childcare, offices, and doctors. The federal government is to be backed in creating an effective municipal right of first refusal against displacement.

The SPD wants more public funding for energy-efficiency retrofits of buildings so that housing stays affordable despite rising energy prices. Energy standards are to be set with an eye to keeping renovations affordable.

The SPD wants to give more money for renovating houses. Then houses use less energy. That should protect the climate and lower costs. Renovating should still be affordable.

The funding programs are meant to save as much energy as possible across the whole building stock. Larger vacant buildings in rural areas are to be made usable again through subsidized modernization and conversion, renewing towns from their core. In construction, the SPD wants to use more wood and other renewable materials and advance pilot projects. It also backs recycling building materials and preserving the "gray energy" already embodied in buildings.

The SPD wants to make housing construction cheaper by simplifying building law and reforming the real estate transfer tax. Planning and permitting are to be faster so that more land is available for building.

The SPD wants building to cost less. For that, building rules should become simpler. The tax on buying land should also change. Permits should come faster.

As examples of the building-law reform, the platform names fewer rules and allowing modular construction. State funding programs are to be redesigned so they get housing construction going again despite high costs and interest rates. Larger employers are also to build, for instance company housing, and are to be encouraged to pay rent subsidies to staff. Municipalities are to get help with planning and building, and designating new residential areas is to become legally easier.

The SPD wants to ban by law speculative vacancy and other misuse of housing. Land is to stay in public hands as far as possible, and housing construction that does not aim at profit is to be supported.

The SPD wants to ban leaving homes empty on purpose. Nobody should speculate with homes. The state should keep a lot of land. Housing cooperatives should get more help.

Speculating on housing is to be made economically unattractive. In tight markets, the SPD wants to extend the period during which tenants cannot be evicted after a rental unit is converted into a condo. It plans priority for heritable building rights (leasing public land instead of selling it), a land fund, and returning housing units to public ownership every year. Cooperatives, non-profit companies, and communal housing projects are to get better funding and financing terms. The SPD backs the federal plan for a new non-profit housing status and wants it open to cooperatives and housing projects as well.

The SPD wants to classify more municipalities as tight housing markets so that the Mietpreisbremse (rent brake) and other protections apply there. It argues that rents have recently risen faster than salaries.

Rents are rising faster than wages. So the SPD wants to protect renters better. The rent brake should apply in more towns. More towns should get an official rent index.

The classification triggers the rent brake, caps on rent increases, and limits on passing modernization costs on to tenants. Together with municipalities, rent indexes in Hesse are to be expanded step by step. This is meant to make it easier for tenants to enforce their rights.

The SPD wants to set up a state program for social housing assistance services that help people in difficult circumstances find a home. Municipal offices are also to prevent people from losing their homes. The program sees having a home as a precondition for taking part in society.

The SPD wants to help people in need find a home. The state should set up a new funding program for this. Towns should have special offices. These offices should stop people from losing their homes.

The program notes that Hesse currently has only two social housing assistance services. The new funding program is meant to increase their number. Municipal offices are to work preventively against the loss of homes and thereby avoid homelessness.

The SPD wants to launch 10,000 student dorm places during the next legislative term. In the long run, one in five students should have access to subsidized housing. The platform argues that fewer than one in ten students in Hesse currently has a dorm place.

Many students cannot find an affordable place to live. The SPD wants 10,000 new places in student dorms. Later, one in five students should get subsidized housing. Students in expensive cities should also get extra money for rent.

Beyond the 10,000 places, the SPD wants to push for a joint federal-state program to expand and renovate dorms. Students in especially tight housing markets are to receive additional housing cost subsidies. The long-term goal is a supply rate of 20 percent subsidized student housing. Doctoral candidates, postdocs and international students are also to get more help finding housing.