The state housing offensive in Bavaria, which has been announced for years, is not making any progress. Last year, the Bayernheim company, 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 a response from the Ministry of Construction to a request from the Greens in the state parliament. In total, Bayernheim had 267 apartments in its portfolio at the turn of the year. In 2018, Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) announced the goal of building 10,000 affordable apartments across Bavaria by 2025.
“Markus Söder is still leaning way out of the window with his promises when it comes to housing construction,” said Jürgen Mistol, Green Party spokesman for the housing sector. “But state housing construction is currently only progressing at a snail’s pace. This is very clear at Bayernheim.”
According to Mistol, the 33 new apartments fall far short of the already meager announcement of 89 apartments. The Ministry of Construction named this number as a target in February 2023. Even if the numbers of newly built apartments at Stadibau, the housing construction company for state employees, and at the Nuremberg Settlement Works are better than at Bayernheim, they seem very manageable in view of the ambitious goal: at Stadibau there were 278, the Nuremberg Settlement Works reported 146 new apartments. “The announced 10,000 apartments by 2025 at Bayernheim alone are becoming increasingly distant,” said Mistol. The majority of the apartments put on the market still only exist on paper. “Nobody can live in it. Success in housing construction is measured not by words, but by actions.”
Construction Minister Christian Bernreiter (CSU) still sees Bayernheim on the path to success: it will have had almost 8,400 apartments on the way by the end of 2023, and almost 1,800 of them are currently being built, he announced in his annual balance sheet for 2023 in mid-January. In fact, the list of Bayernheim’s housing projects is long: twelve projects are currently under construction between Ansbach and Ruhpolding – a total of 1,762 residential units. There are 28 projects with several thousand residential units in the planning and preparation phase.