ILast spring, the student representatives of the Berta Jourdan School were guests of the planning committee of the city parliament. They complained that it was very difficult for students who are being trained to become educators and curative education nurses to find affordable housing. They also reported that during a visit in 2018 Mayor Peter Feldmann (SPD) worked to improve the situation. Every year since then they have written to Feldmann – and have only ever received meaningless answers.
This process may only be a small anecdote. But it is symptomatic of Feldmann, who in his ten years in office promised a lot, especially in the area of housing and planning policy, but kept little. There was little to be seen of the “working mayor” that he always wanted to be when it came to developing solutions for complicated issues.
In his first election campaign in 2012, he repeated his slogan “build, build, build” so often that it became a household word. was also built. Around 36,000 apartments were completed between 2012 and 2021, significantly more than in the previous ten years. This development was favored by the strong influx, which ensured sustained demand. Many investors who previously only had offices in mind have become interested in apartments in the past decade.
Little success with the designation of new building areas
They were also able to arise because there were still enough building plots available, for example in the Europaviertel, on the Riedberg and on the Rebstock. With the designation of new building areas, which secures the development of Frankfurt for the future, the mayor was not very successful. Feldmann, born in 1958, liked to tell the story during his first campaign how he played in the field in Bonames when he was a little boy and was told that it would soon be over because there was construction going on there. He wanted to point out that 50 years later this building area has still not been realized. Another ten years have now passed and little has happened. It is not known that Feldmann was particularly committed to the construction area. Which may be due to the fact that there is a lot of resistance to the development area in Bonames – in the part of the city that Feldmann thinks he understands particularly well. And when the Greens unceremoniously overturned the Günthersburghöfe development area in the north end during the coalition negotiations last year, nothing was heard from the mayor. Feldmann also wanted to build on the Pfingstberg between Nieder-Eschbach and Nieder-Erlenbach. With the CDU and the Greens, he was not able to gain acceptance with this proposal.
On the other hand, there is always a political majority for the construction area in the north-west on the A5, which Feldmann presented in 2017 together with planning officer Mike Josef (SPD). Here, however, one must add: in Frankfurt. The surrounding area was against it from the start, and that also has something to do with the failure of regional politician Feldmann. In 2014/15 he invited to large regional conferences in the Römer and in the Paulskirche. He announced these events as the starting point for better networking. When it comes to housing construction in particular, everyone should pull together in the future. Nothing happened.
Instead of building trust and exploring common interests, he presented the plans for a new district without even trying to get local politicians to support the plans. He dismissed the resistance as a “political campaign” and emphasized that Frankfurt had the right to build. That came across as arrogant and confrontational. But cooperation is not Feldmann’s thing, who likes to work with enemy images.
It is not surprising that the issue of building land, which was so important to Feldmann in his election campaigns, did not appear in the balance sheet that he presented in July when he announced his resignation. Instead, he emphasized the “rent freeze” at ABG Holding and Nassauische Heimstätte. In fact, it is mainly due to Feldmann that the housing associations only increase rents by a maximum of five percent within five years. Feldmann wanted to go even further, and in an interview in 2019 he described the reduction of rents at ABG with the help of municipal subsidies as firmly agreed. It didn’t come to that.
On the other hand, Feldmann was successful with the push to aim for a higher proportion of subsidized apartments in new construction projects. But an honest balance sheet also means that the higher quotas can only be enforced in new development areas. And for these to come, you need areas on which they can develop. Incidentally, this also applies to companies. But additional commercial space, which not only the economy but also the DGB considers necessary, was not identified during Feldmann’s term of office.
Overall, he has focused a lot on social issues in urban development policy. But he has done little to ensure that the city can develop and be strong enough for charity in the future.
