Working group active: get to the root of the housing problem
The city of Innsbruck has around 17,000 rental apartments, of which around 480 to 500 apartments are newly let every year. On a long-term average, around 145 new apartments will be added as a result of the construction of subsidized apartments. The criteria for allocating these apartments are currently being revised.
INNSBRUCK. This Friday, October 7th, the first workshop of the working group (AG) set up before the summer started in the city library. It is made up of representatives from all factions in the municipal council, urban planning, housing allocation and the state’s housing promotion department and the property developers Innsbrucker Immobilien Gesellschaft (IIG), Neue Heimat Tirol (NHT) and TIGEWOSI. In several sessions, she will address various aspects of housing allocation. The topic is the starting point target group on the program. “Especially the question of who has a municipal apartment and under what conditions is a crucial one, but also very reasonable,” explains Mayor Georg Willi. “We want to give access to as many people as possible. But those who need it the most must also get it the quickest.”
Demographics, household income and housing costs
In the workshop on October 7, the participants will receive input from the City Statistics Office to developments demographics as well as that of household income and the living costs. “The aim is to get a common picture of who is eligible for affordable housing,” explains the mayor responsible for the department. According to Willi, the term “affordable housing” has so far bundled various individual measures, what is missing is a superstructure that should also be a basis for better comparability.
A total of eight workshops on modernizing the housing allocation directive
A further eight workshop dates have been fixed up to and including June next year, and will be in November housing emergencies and the permeability of the system and in December Alternative settlement ideas discussed. Depending on the topic, too external experts or other internal departments in the magistrate. The representatives of the parliamentary groups also have the opportunity to propose experts and topics for the individual workshops.
Civil parties want change for small and medium-sized businesses as early as autumn
In July of this year, the FPÖ, ÖVP and Für Innsbruck (FI) received a lot of attention for their proposal for a second allocation list for medium-sized companies. According to this, apartments should not only be given to people on low incomes, but also to those who do not fall under the procurement directive due to their higher – but still not high – income. The aim is to ensure that middle-class families can still find affordable housing in Innsbruck. FI club chairman Lucas Krackl expects that a decision will be made in the municipal council for the allocation list for medium-sized companies in the autumn. “The points of criticism that were raised at the beginning can be easily resolved with good will and the new allocation list can start on January 1, 2023,” he says. The proposal was criticized by the SPÖ club chairman, Benjamin Plach: the new proposal from the conservatives still stipulates that only those people can be put on the list whose housing costs account for forty percent of their household income.