The possibility of receiving housing benefit raises high expectations in a city with expensive rents: many people in Munich try to receive the rent subsidy, which is calculated using a complex, complex procedure – and then come away empty-handed. As much as the social department has struggled under three different social officers over the past decades, processing times have increased with each housing benefit reform, despite all the increases in staff and the centralization of application processing. Currently, applicants have to wait more than a year.
The city is now placing new hope for acceleration in the “Münchner Weg” – an application form shortened from eight to four pages. “I am pleased that the Bavarian Ministry of Construction has approved my proposal to use a simplified housing benefit application in Munich,” said Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD). “In this way, the application process can be simplified and the processing time shortened,” with the aim of ensuring that citizens “receive their housing benefit more quickly.”
A year ago, shortly after Housing Benefit Plus came into force, which was intended to provide a higher rent subsidy to significantly more people with low incomes, the housing benefit office had almost 12,000 applications that had not been processed or had not been fully processed; now there are around 17,500. The simplified application is intended from March 18th in the social community centers and the city information center. The Bavarian construction minister has initially approved its use until the end of the year. Not only has the size of the form been significantly reduced, the number of questions has also been drastically reduced, from 32 to just eleven. This also makes the design clearer. According to the social affairs department, for example, questions whose data had already been collected by another body could be dispensed with.
All housing benefit applications are processed centrally at Werinherstrasse 87.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
However, Reiter reiterated that the “Munich Way” has not yet achieved the goal of “streamlining and simplifying the housing benefit regulations overall.” It is urgently necessary to further simplify the procedure in order to be able to process the applications of those who are actually entitled quickly. The Bavarian Construction Minister Christian Bernreiter (CSU) also criticized the process: “Applying for housing benefit is very complex due to federal regulations.” Even with digital procedures, “the regulations are far too complex for a simple application and rapid payment by the housing benefit authorities.” The Munich social affairs officer Dorothee Schiwy spoke of a “bureaucracy monster”.
In addition, according to the social affairs department, there is the difficult personnel situation. In Munich, the number of applications has increased by 45 percent since the last reform. The number of those eligible has grown from 0.4 percent of all households to 1.2 percent of all households. However, many of the applicants are not eligible. In 2022, not even every second housing benefit application processed was successful. Christian Köning, chairman of the SPD/Volt city council group, called for the application process to be streamlined “so that the aid reaches tenants quickly to relieve the burden.”