Bavaria's housing construction offensive is not making progress

The state housing construction offensive in Bavaria, which has been announced for years, is still not making any progress. In the past year 2023, BayernHeim, which was founded by the state government specifically for housing construction, was only able to complete 33 apartments in a large residential complex in Freising, according to an answer from the Ministry of Construction to a question from the Greens in the state parliament. In total, BayernHeim had 267 apartments in its portfolio at the turn of the year. As a reminder: In 2018, Minister President Markus Söder (CSU) had set a target of building 10,000 affordable apartments throughout Bavaria by 2025.

"Markus Söder continues to go out on a limb with his promises when it comes to housing construction. However, state housing construction is only progressing at a snail's pace. This can be seen very clearly with BayernHeim," said Jürgen Mistol, spokesperson for the Green Party in the housing sector. The 33 new apartments would therefore fall far short of the already meagre announcement of 89 apartments. This figure was the target set by the Ministry of Construction in February 2023.

Although the figures for newly built apartments at Stadibau, the housing construction company for state employees, and Siedlungswerk Nürnberg are better than at BayernHeim, they seem very modest in view of the ambitious target: Stadibau built 278 new apartments, while Siedlungswerk Nürnberg reported 146.

"The 10,000 apartments announced by 2025 - at BayernHeim alone - are getting further and further away," said Mistol. The majority of the apartments that have been launched still only exist on paper. "Nobody can live in them. Success in housing construction is not measured by words, but by deeds."

However, Construction Minister Christian Bernreiter (CSU) believes BayernHeim is on the road to success: he announced in his 2023 annual review in mid-January that it had launched almost 8,400 apartments by the end of 2023, almost 1,800 of which were currently under construction. BayernHeim's list of residential projects is indeed long: twelve projects are currently under construction between Ansbach and Ruhpolding - a total of 1762 residential units. There are 28 projects with several thousand residential units in the planning and preparation phase.