Specialists in hospitals are rather rare anyway. The situation becomes even more difficult if, on top of that, no accommodation is available in which potential employees can be accommodated. The Ebersberger district clinic faces this problem. Although the first staff housing building on Pfarrer-Guggetzer-Strasse with 22 new apartments should be ready for occupancy in August, the waiting list is getting longer and longer. A second residential building for staff on Von-Scala-Straße, for which the district council has now commissioned the Ebersberg housing association (WBE) to plan, should bring further relief.
How important this is can be seen from the figures published by the district clinic. According to the report, the existing staff accommodation buildings are old and unattractive, but they are still full and are far from meeting the demand. Although those 22 new apartments will be available from August, 19 Filipino nursing staff will also be added. In addition, 22 employees are on the waiting list looking for an apartment, and 15 employees would like to move into a two-room apartment. In addition, the demand or need for a three- or four-room apartment comes about three or four times a year. Affordable housing is simply not available on the open market.
A building with 60 apartments and an underground car park is planned
The Ebersberg district office pointed out how important this is for the clinic at the most recent district council meeting: “New, qualified nursing staff can only be won in combination with cheap, affordable housing,” says a statement. In order to relieve the district clinic, another 60 new apartments including an underground car park are to be built on Von-Scala-Straße. Planning for the 15 to 20 million euro project is already underway, and the district councils have now officially entrusted the WBE with the task.
This means that the construction of the apartments could now go quite quickly. As finance manager Brigitte Keller, who is also a board member of the WBE, said at the meeting, a preliminary building application is to be submitted to the city of Ebersberg this year. The first excavators could then start rolling as early as 2023. There is no cost to the district itself. For investments that are not covered by subsidies from the Free State, the Treasury would probably have to take out a loan. The reason for this is that the authority can do this at reduced interest rates compared to the WBE. The housing association would then be responsible for paying off the debt. If they have to take out a loan themselves because of the possibly tight district budget, it could end up being more expensive for the tenants because of the higher interest rates.
In order to save costs and to realize the new staff apartments as quickly as possible, Freie-Voter-Kreisrat Wilfried Seidelmann suggested possibly going back to the already existing plans of the specialist medical center, which was to be built at that very spot. “As is well known, that didn’t go well, but the size of the development was already planned,” says Seidelmann. Brigitte Keller replied that it was not the district council’s responsibility to build on this draft. “The WBE would have to coordinate this directly with the district clinic.”