Marc Bernhard, April 23, 2026, Local Veto of Asylum Housing

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/74, p. 8825. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The situation in the cities and communities in Germany is catastrophic: Ever more budget freezes, ever less money for the the most necessary obligatory duties. Swimming pools, gymnasiums, day-cares and entire school buildings cannot be renovated. Streets, walkways, landscaping, the entire public space and infrastructure increasingly decays. 

The present deficit of the local governments amounts to 60 billion euros and will climb by 2028 to over 100 billion euros. The principal origin of this disaster is, according to the central association of the local governments, the explosion of the sozial costs. 

In this dramatic situation, the housing emergency ever further intensifies. Many people no longer find affordable housing. Young people cannot start new families; young families need to remain in their much too small dwellings. In big cities, often hundreds of those seeking housing stand in waiting lines. Despite this, you ever further intensify the housing crisis. 

For normal people, there is no more housing, certainly not for the low-income whom you ostensibly have at heart. You prolong the rent price brake, and empower your colleagues in the States to designate vast areas with strained housing markets. You thereby confirm that in Germany a vast housing emergency prevails. 

And even though you quite precisely know this, you nevertheless continue to carry out large, forced allocations of refugees in areas with a housing emergency and thereby quite knowingly intensify the domestic population’s housing emergency ever further. What you are doing, namely  playing off the domestic population against the refugees, 

            Clara Bünger (Linke): That, you do! 

            Caren Lay (Linke): That, you do!

is nothing other than asozial. Before I let anyone in, I need to first examine whether I have room enough, 

            Ina Latendorf (Linke): You’ve never had a relation to the constitution!

and whether in fact sufficient room is at hand, the local people know best of all. There thus needs be in the future a veto right of the communities against such forced allocations when already there prevails a housing emergency, dear friends. 

            Ina Latendorf (Linke): You well know that the numbers have receded, ne?

Since it makes no sense to let in ever more people somewhere where thousands of families no more find housing. That is asozial. 

            Clara Bünger (Linke): There are local governments which voluntarily accept!

Your forced allocations of refugees throw communities, already on the brink of bankruptcy, completely into financial ruin, and thereby into inability to act. Two-thirds, in many Federal States even three-quarters, of Bürgergeld recipients have a migration background. 

Housing for the Bürgergeld recipients alone costs the communities every year 11 billion euros out of their own pocket. In Berlin, just the sheltering of refugees costs 1 billion euros – money which is lacking for the most important problems: Renovation of schools and day-care, repair of streets, bridges and city clinics. 

The social costs of the local governments since 2015 have climbed from 54 billion euros to over 85 billion euros. The exploding social costs in the cities and communities becomes clear to everyone: One can have a sozial state. One can also have open borders. But both together leads unavoidably to the collapse of the sozial system. 

We experience precisely that directly in Germany. Who overburdens the local governments, endangers the social peace. Recover consciousness, and finally pull the emergency brake [Drucksache 21/5476]! 

 

[trans: tem]

Thomas Fetsch, January 15, 2026, Rental Housing

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/53, pp. 6355-6356. 

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

“To Better Protect Renters”, so is the undertitle of the called-for motion. The here presented demands from the Linke party for a supposed rescue of an, in part, no longer functioning rental market which is unfortunately covered to a not insignificant degree with similarly knitted regulatory aims of the governing coalition – we have just now heard a bit of it – are all too well known, in a longer view massively detrimental, and stamped with a fundamental scepticism vis-à-vis owners of real property and the functionings of market forces: A sharp rental price brake, a limitation of existing rental increases, a more temporary rental freeze [Mietenstopp], a substantial restriction or indeed abolition of indexed rentals, a regulation or a ban on furnishing supplements [Möbilierungszuschlagen], a strong regulation of short-term rentals, a massive restriction of owner use terminations [Eigenbedarfskündigungen], expansion of grace period payments, an introduction of agreement and transparency obligations, etc. etc. The supposedly all-knowing state – instead of market reason and realism – shall thus set it right. Ladies and gentlemen, this false, as even so hostile to freedom, spirit with which the presented motion breathes, we reject outright. 

Instead of creating the statutory and economic conditions so that business builds new housing, and owners of housing space are not, with all force, more or less deterred from renting, socialization [Vergesellschaftung] fantasies are spread – by means of expropriation and by means of ever additional shackles laid upon the owners – and become salonfähig in bürgerliche milieux. Thereby is private rental law reconstructed into an additional sozial right, instead of finally, vigorously addressing the actual problems of the present housing market misery. 

In fact – this proceeds from a current, representative Civey survey – it is expected that the regulation of indexed rents, planned by the Federal government, as it happens threatens to become a veritable housing construction brake. Since by the long-term value guaranty of inflation protection, building projects often only become more calculable and feasible. The additional statutory guidelines – be it here in excessive form of the Linke motion, or in form of the declared views of the governing coalition – only expand and deepen this problematic still further.    

In the end, still fewer rentable dwellings are available, and the stock worsens ever further because renovation and reconstruction measures will simply be omitted due to a lack of sufficient return on rentals. That could well enough be seen, for example, in the DDR, and that, we no more want here, ladies and gentlemen. 

What have Bund, States and local governments under leadership of the old parties – including the Linke, for example, in Thüringen – done for an improvement? Nothing, with penetrating effectiveness. They much more withdraw, by plan and incisively, from the rental market and sell their stock. In climate madness, they make massively more expensive the energy and construction costs. In the bureaucracy madness active in recent decades, every construction contract means an incalculable time risk for builders of every kind. You raise, in combination with the States and local governments, striking taxes like the real estate transfer tax [Grunderwerbsteuer] and the property tax [Grundsteuer]. And thus it plainly comes to, besides the actual rent, additional, sprawling rental side-costs which have long since attained the level of a second rent. It is thus primarily your false, anti-renter and anti-landlord policy which has created the dilemma of the high rents. 

An additional, essential price-driving aspect was in any case recently named by the German Renters Union. The number of renters has risen in the past five years by around 3 million people, which has naturally, additionally and clearly intensified the dwellings supply situation. And if you all do not want to hear it: Behind that is the unplanned, uncontrolled and overwhelming migration which we self-evidently reject. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): I thought you had forgotten something!

The means of the Linke as also of the coalition – still more regulation and still deeper intervention – further does not help here, but even intensifies the situation. From this muddled situation, only a great new start helps, and which is only possible with the AfD. 

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

Sebastian Münzenmaier, July 8, 2025, Housing Ministry

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]

Markus Buchheit, March 14, 2023, EU Forced Housing Restoration

AfD Kompakt, March 14, 2023

That eco-fanatics and climate sectarians are allowed to presume such a deep intervention in rights of ownership and privacy is unbelievable. This proceeding affects not only homeowners. Renters also will need to bear the costs. One in addition may be yoked to thousands of legal procedures which will strain the tormented citizens. Yet in Germany there still is in principle the basic right of Art. 13 of the Basic Law which guarantees the immunity of the dwelling. The individual has the right to a secured, elementary living space in which one is left in peace – and indeed from planned-economy, regulatory interferences in the freedom of individuals.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Sebastian Münzenmaier, February 10, 2023, Housing and Immigration

German Bundestag, February 10, 2023, Plenarprotokoll 20/86, pp. 10317-10318.

Right honorable Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

In a “best Germany of all time”, according to a homelessness report, almost 40,000 people are on the street, all together around 260,000 have no fixed shelter. Who with open eyes moves through German cities can see this suffering under many bridges and in many subway stations.

The motion put forward by the Linke now wants to fight this problem with the Housing First concept. Positive examples and some studies show that the concept thoroughly works. First a dwelling and then assistance in specific areas of living which are often concerned with an improvement and for a dwelling stability. We also welcome this concept. We are strongly persuaded that Housing First can be a component of a strategy against homelessness.  

Yet if this concept “Housing First” is to function, then known conditions need to be fulfilled, and that is the great contradiction of your motion, ladies and gentlemen. Since it is just your political dispositions which prevent successful strategies in regards homelessness. That has two reasons.

First. In Germany prevails an acute housing shortage, as you yourselves correctly write in your motion. Today, we are lacking 700,000 dwellings. That is besides the greatest deficit in more than 20 years. And what does the policy do to counter that? At the Federal level, the Federal ministries fail completely. The great goal of 400,000 dwellings – it really is an impudence that have have once again defended it – you have botched, you will botch it, you will never achieve it. You have this year crashingly failed. Apparently, not even 200,000 dwellings will be built this year. The only sensible thing which could done with your Ampel building ministry would be: We abolish it. We re-designate the offices as dwelling space. Then would Frau Geywitz have at least achieved one sensible thing in her life.

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): You are again today quite witty?

Yet not only you of the Ampel are guilty of the housing misery – you need not get excited – the Linke also in part contribute to it.

Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Nevertheless quite witty, what you say there! Man, man, man!

You write in your motion, dear Linke, it should be managed “according to the example of the State of Berlin”. To me, that is real satire. It is, ja, nice, Frau Katja Kipping, that you use your last days as a Senator to visit us here in the Bundestag; we rejoice. Yet I would prefer you did your work in Berlin; since the housing market in Berlin, where you of the Linke have co-governed since 2016, is overall one of the most catastrophic. For years, the number of approved new housing constructions declines. And instead of promoting new housing construction, the Linke prefer to blather on about expropriations and, with their socialist projects like the rent cap, drive the last builders out of Berlin. You are not part of the solution, you are the problem, dear Linke delegation.

Dirk-Ulrich Mende (SPD): You are the problem!

Let us come to the second reason why your dispositions do not function. Even if you do not want to hear it – you may again bleat alike –

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Intelligent interjection, that was!

who wants Housing First must live “Germany First”. The uncontrolled mass immigration of the last years exorbitantly increases the housing demand.

            Maximilian Mordhorst (FDP): Yet it rapidly turns the corner!

Yes, I know, you do not want to hear it. Last year, 1.3 million foreigners came to Germany; those are not my numbers. I did not invite them; that was you.

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): It was Putin who provided for that!

1.3 million foreigners! The empirica regio reckons in 2023 alone with an additional 600,000 households of Ukrainians alone in the housing market. Quite honestly: You always rile yourselves up over it!

            Maximilian Mordhorst (FDP): You always rile yourself up!

Yet is it then so difficult to grasp – I know it is apparently for one or the other really difficult – that you are able to just once bestow any dwelling in Germany? You can give them either to German citizens who produce the prosperity of this country, or implement them for projects like Housing First,

Leni Breymaier (SPD): What then do you want to do with the people? You wicked man, you!

or give them to anyone who yesterday has stumbled over the border.

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Oh, oh, oh!

Yet you can give them only once. That is prioritization, that is the duty of politics. You appear willing to simply not understand it, ladies and gentlemen.

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): You prioritize between people! That is offensive!

            Leni Breymaier (SPD): You are a humanitarian disaster on two legs!

For us of the AfD, the priorites in this area are clearly set: To build more housing, deport those obligated to leave, stop migration and instead make housing space available for our own people and gladly for projects like Housing First.

Allow me in conclusion to direct some words to the Berliners who are voting on Sunday.

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Yet that must be quickly, please.

Who wants Housing First must vote “Germany First”. For affordable rents, new housing space and a pleasant neighbor, there is on Sunday just one option:

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion.

All votes for the AfD!

I am grateful to you for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]