Heilbronn/Stuttgart (dpa/lsw) - Municipal council president Steffen Jäger has called for an expansion of the 80 million euro subsidy program with which the state wants to support local authorities in creating housing for refugees. In view of higher construction costs and disrupted supply chains, the construction of new apartments is currently not the right approach for the municipalities, said Jäger of the "Heilbronner Voice" and the Konstanz "Südkurier" (Thursday). "Therefore there is the municipal proposal to also promote the purchase of older existing apartments." However, the regulation of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Construction stipulates that only the purchase of apartments that are no more than four years old will be subsidised. Jäger said: "In a multiple crisis situation, we need much more political courage to enable the municipalities to find pragmatic solutions."
The state announced on Wednesday that 80 million euros would be available for 2022 and 2023 so that cities and communities can create, build or expand living space. As of this Thursday, municipalities can apply for grants from the state development bank, the L-Bank. The state wants to pay a fixed amount of 1,000 euros per square meter of living space, which corresponds to a quarter of the construction and land costs that can be taken into account. The prerequisite is that the living space must be available to refugees for ten years.
According to the Ministry of Justice, around 125,000 refugees from Ukraine have arrived in Baden-Württemberg since the beginning of the war. In addition, there were 13,500 asylum seekers from other countries in the first half of the year. The new funding program is a new edition. In the last program, municipalities in the south-west submitted around 630 applications in the course of the migration crisis from 2015 to 2017 and requested around 112 million euros.
