Merkel promises 5 bln euros for social housing construction in Germany

Source: Xinhua| 2019-06-14 22:04:43|Editor: Li Xia
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BERLIN, June 14 (Xinhua) -- At the annual meeting of the German tenants' association in Cologne on Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) pledged 5 billion euros (5.6 billion U.S. dollars) for the construction of social housing in Germany during this legislative period until 2021.

During the same time, the federal government would provide a total of 13 billion euros for social housing construction, tax benefit packages for building as well subsidies for urban development.

"We urgently need affordable apartments," the president of the tenants' association, Franz-Georg Rips, said at the meeting, adding that "people are losing hope that politics is willing and able to solve real problems."

However, Merkel said that the responsibility for ensuring that enough housing is built would lie not only with the Germany's government.

Merkel stated that her government needed to "create a climate in which people like to construct homes" but stressed that regulations were needed to incentivize the right kind of building projects.

For this to happen, Germany would need interested private investors who would have to feel committed to the common good, according to Merkel.

She emphasized that construction was the decisive factor in defusing the social question of housing. The government would stick to its goal of creating 350,000 new apartments per year.

In order to prevent the displacement of tenants, Berlin's senate, a left coalition between the SPD, the Green party and the left party, is already planning a 5-year rent cap in German capital from 2020 onwards.

Now, demands for a nationwide rent cap are coming from Merkel's coalition partner SPD. Temporary SPD leader Thorsten Schaefer-Guembel told the newspaper Tagesspiegel on Friday that the goal was to freeze rents in sought-after residential areas for five years.

"We need the rent cap for the whole of Germany," said Schaefer-Guembel.

On Friday, Merkel did not mention the 5-year rent cap by Berlin's senate but said her government was analyzing the effectiveness of rent caps before taking further decisions.

The chancellor vowed to create transparency with more accurate and qualified rent price tables. This would be necessary so that "things do not accelerate themselves", Merkel said with a view to rising rents in many densely populated areas.

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