Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - In the fight against the housing shortage, the tenants' association is demanding that the state government buy back thousands of former LBBW apartments from the real estate group Vonovia. The state government must negotiate a state-wide takeover of 18,000 Vonovia apartments with the participation of the municipalities, writes state chairman Rolf Gaßmann in a letter to Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens). For many low-income tenants, privatizing these apartments would result in unaffordable rents and evictions. Across the country there are only 50,000 social rental apartments, criticized Gassmann.
In a separate letter to Mayor Frank Nopper, the Stuttgart Tenants' Association requested that the city of Stuttgart buy around 3,500 Vonovia apartments. After Vonovia announced that it would sell 67,000 apartments nationwide in the next few years, Stuttgart and the state should take the initiative to buy them back.
In 2015, Vonovia bought 19,800 apartments, mostly in Baden-Württemberg. They previously belonged to a subsidiary of Patrizia Immobilien. At the beginning of 2012, the company took over 21,000 apartments from Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW). At that time, regulations to protect tenants were agreed in a social charter.
