German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/16, p. 1506.
Right honorable Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
Brand new housing in record time, despite a shortage of construction land and tight funds, for 1,000 people is impossible? – Wrongly reasoned! In Berlin-Kreuzberg, our state shows what is possible; at least, if the renters are so-called refugees. Then an office complex will in short order be reconstructed into housing units – money plays no role, the rental cost of 1.2 million euros per month paid by the diligent German taxpayer. If, however, it’s about housing space for one’s own citizens, then the matter suddenly appears quite different. Then all is complicated, and unfortunately there is often no more money.
Happily, we now have a new Housing Minister with whom all shall be better, quicker and, before all, cheaper. Everyone here in the house is, I believe, aware: Building costs must go down. And which ideas does Minster Hubertz present to us with Lanz on the television? In the future, in regards new construction, underground parking should be simply omitted, and the parking places instead be moved above near the housing. Thus would 20 percent of the costs be saved. Frau Hubertz, what an inane proposal! In big cities, there is simply no room for such parking places near high-rise housing, but only the possibilities of underground garages or just no parking space. In rural areas, that could be done, but honestly I know of only a few of which under a single family house one may, for a heap of money, accommodate one’s own underground garage.
This unworldly proposal is unfortunately typical of our new Housing Minister. You, Frau Hubertz, wrap yourself in marketing phraseology. Yet as soon as it becomes substantial, you ever again show that you unfortunately have no idea of the real life of people out there. If you really want to lower the construction costs, then you please need to begin with yourself; since more that a third of the construction costs – all of 37 percent – originates at the monent with the state by means of insulation prescripts, taxes and duties and regulations. Fewer underground garages are thus not the solution, but fewer environmental investments, less bureaucracy and fewer taxes, ladies and gentlemen.
And quite besides that: If you want to make housing at least a bit cheaper, then you could do, ja, as the coalition in the coalition contract promised, to reduce the electricity tax for private households. Yet even this mini-relief you grant to our citizens out there not at all, and instead cheerfully continue to shut it off, and indeed not only in regards electricity, but also in regards heating.
You have quite openly conceded this, Frau Minister, recently in the Bild newspaper. To the question of what you would advise someone whose heating has gone kaputt, and who needs to renew the heating, you said: “Thus in no case install gas heating; since that will be so expensive when now the CO2 price further rises.” Instead, one should preferably take a peek at district heating [Fernwärme]. – In most cities in Germany, district heating is not at all extensively available. There where district heating is available, the costs straightaway explode – the May numbers for Frankfurt: Up 36 percent. From where the district heating in small towns in the country should come, for example in regards to you, Herr Limbacher, would interest me. How that should work, no one here in the house can explain to me.
In addressing these problems, the Minister shows her completely clueless side: One can lease or rent a heating system – thus for one to two years – until one knows where the communal heating plans were going. That is no joke – I wish it was – but the Minister actually proposed that. Frau Hubertz, I knew that you are utterly fact-free. Yet your statements show me that you are also utterly extraterrestrial.
Your priorities are obviously not in housing construction, but elsewhere. As the Handelsblätt reported, in the last two weeks you heaved two of your representatives into well endowed jobs at a new ministerial office. One co-worker will be remunerated, non-pay-scale, according to the highest possible pay, and the other co-worker shall as an official ad interim receive a basic salary of more than 11,000 euros per month. You have thus set up not a single impulse for new housing. Yet the old-age provision for two additional comrades has been secured, ladies and gentlemen.
Fact-free, unworldly nepotism – to that add a bit of PR blah-blah – that perhaps suffices to make a career in today’s SPD. But the Housing Ministry is for you two sizes too big.
Hearty thanks for the attention.
Esra Limbacher (SPD): Yet we have no priors!
[trans: tem]
