Housing in Berlin: Senator Gaebler warns of further decline!

Housing in Berlin: Senator Gaebler warns of further decline!

Berlin's lack of housing continues to come to a head! The building author Christian Gaebler (60, SPD) is not enthusiastic about the progress in housing construction. Despite the completion of 349 new apartments on Rauchstrasse in the Wasserstadt Oberhavel, 197 of which are available for people with a living permit certificate, he warns: "We are not currently creating 20,000 apartments a year" and there are no improvements for the coming year, such as bz-berlin.de reported. The urgent need to build apartments remains obvious, because Berlin needs a total of 222,000 new apartments by 2040, plus 50,000 as a reserve.

construction industry faces challenges

The causes of the deficit are diverse: material and skilled workers as well as bureaucratic hurdles hinder the construction projects massively. Gaebler names these obstacles and refers to the necessity of the new Faster Building Act to tighten the planning. There are currently other projects in the starting blocks-such as 1,500 apartments at Marzahn S-Bahn station and 1,800 at Köpenick freight station. But even with these projects, the question remains how the new housing estates are connected to the transport network. "The demand for a better connection, for example through the tram, is absolutely necessary," says Gaebler.

A dark picture, however, throws Gaebler on the construction numbers for 2025. "We will probably not achieve the target brand of 20,000 apartments," he predicts and speaks of a decline of up to 1,000 apartments compared to the previous year. Despite this pessimistic forecast, he sees the development in recent years as positive: "In the past two years we have created over 33,300 new apartments," he emphasizes. There are particularly advances in the social housing, with over 5,000 new buildings, which are forecast for this year, such as "https://www.rbb24.de/politik/biebtrag/2024/berlin-senat-seniger-wohnungen-baugen.html"> rbb24.de These figures make it clear that despite all the difficulties there are steps in the right direction.