BInvestors are currently increasingly reluctant to build housing. According to Albrecht Kochsiek, the CDU’s planning policy spokesman in Römer, this is also due to the city’s specifications. For two and a half years, the so-called building land resolution has been in force in Frankfurt, which provides for fixed quotas for subsidized apartments, community housing projects and low-priced condominiums. Above all, this limits the construction of particularly lucrative condominiums.
“Developers avoid Frankfurt”
Kochsiek believes that this is currently too much of a burden for the real estate industry. “The developers are avoiding Frankfurt,” he said in the planning committee of the city council in the Römer. The building land decision, which the CDU once supported, must be suspended by the end of 2024. The requirements would have to be limited to the previously valid quota of 30 percent subsidized housing. Everything else should be agreed individually with the client.
The coalition of the Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt rejected the CDU’s application. “For the first time we have clear rules for housing construction,” said Simon Witsch (SPD). “If we suspend this now, then we are signaling that the building land decision is a matter for negotiation.” That contradicts a forward-looking planning policy. Johannes Lauterwald (Die Grünen) accused the CDU of chasing after the real estate industry and wanting to build “at any price”. The fact that the building land decision was effective is shown by the fact that the subsidies for social housing were fully exhausted this year. His parliamentary colleague Uli Baier said that the low level of construction activity was due to the current crises and not to the building land decision.
Planning department head Mike Josef (SPD) also defended the specifications: “Especially at the moment it is the right approach. A city should represent its goals with self-confidence. We have to serve all price segments on the housing market.” The city council pointed out that the building land resolution only applies to building areas for which new planning rights are being created. “Anyone who does not agree to the city’s goals will not be granted building rights,” says Josef. However, there are planned construction areas, for example north of the Anne Frank settlement in Eschersheim, where the property owners have already given their approval.
