Zielgerichtete Wohnungspolitik bei staatlichen Haushaltsrestriktionen / Housing Policies Under Tightening Budgets

Increasing public deficits imply, among other things, a careful examination of the high subsidies which are granted in the course of public housing policies in order to achieve quite a number of differing goals. Measures which subsidize the acquisition of self-inhabited housing property, e. g., should not be abolished, but rather be concentrated on the cases of young families with dependent children. Both equity considerations and the ambition of stabilising the budget suggest that the so-called “consumption approach” should be dropped, and calculatory rents for self-inhabited accomodations should be taxed. Housing programmes should generally switch to grants that do not rise with taxable income of individual recipients, and the Sozialer Wohnungsbau ought to be replaced by less expensive measures. At present, inappropriate procedures of developing new residential areas are pushing the constructions costs for housing and reverse the intentions of the policy for the distribution of wealth.