If Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) has his way, the rent freeze for municipal apartments decided in 2019 will be extended beyond the time limit set for summer 2024 – “in any case until the end of my term of office, no matter how long it will be”. This was announced by Reiter on Thursday at a press conference in the old people’s center of a municipal housing complex in Milbertshofen. He was also doing election advertising on his own behalf: the 65-year-old has announced that he wants to run for another six years in the next local elections in 2026.
In any case, Dieter Reiter has set the central theme of his government concept: rents and housing are the “most important social issue in this city in the next ten to twenty years”. In doing so, he followed up on a position paper by the federal SPD, with which they called for stronger tenant protection and more affordable housing at the beginning of the week. Reiter also wants to promote housing construction, which is a priority for him. When thousands of people are waiting for apartments, you cannot put them off by pointing out great energy-saving renovations. However, he assured the approximately 170,000 residents of the 68,000 city apartments: “No one has to fear that we will let the apartments go to waste.”
The faction community of SPD and Volt welcomes the initiative of the mayor. On the subject of affordable housing, Nikolaus Gradl explicitly referred to the “people who built up the city during the years of the economic boom: we don’t want them to move away and spend their retirement in the foothills of the Alps”. His colleague Micky Wenngatz emphasized the housing policy achievements of the SPD-governed state capital, most recently the “new, creative way” of supporting tenant groups who want to buy their houses themselves: “We’re buying the city back.”
Meanwhile, Lars Mentrup criticized the Free State of Bavaria. In view of the forthcoming state elections, he hopes that “tenant-hostile policies should come to an end soon”. Beatrix Zurek, the chairwoman of the Munich tenants’ association, described Reiter’s announcement as a “Munich double boom” and “Wink with a standing oak to Berlin to the FDP”, which is preventing all measures to protect tenants at the federal level.
The Greens, as government partners in the town hall, also signaled their support: “We are pleased that the SPD has followed our bid in July to take on the subject of rent freezes,” said parliamentary group spokesman Dominik Krause: “We would have been even happier if they first would have spoken to her coalition partner about it.” But the Social Democrats could still do that when it comes to the open question of how the rent freeze should be structured.
Reiter’s initiative means that the municipal housing associations Gewofag and GWG, which will be merged into one (“Münchner Wohnen”) in 2024, “cannot count on more income”. The mayor suspects: “The management is only moderately happy with this message.” If the heads of “Münchner Wohnen” came to the conclusion that the money was not enough for the tasks, the additional funds would have to come from the budget, said Reiter. Then the city council would have to decide what should be postponed and where savings should be made. Reiter prepared the parties for cuts in some projects: “I don’t think that in 2025 we will be able to afford everything at the same time.”