Federal government launches hardship program for housing companies

The long-planned hardship program for housing companies, which are particularly suffering from the rise in energy prices, has officially started. The regulation should help to absorb increased costs and close liquidity gaps, the Federal Ministry of Construction announced on Monday. The background is that rising payments for electricity and heating energy are often advanced by the housing companies until the operating costs have been settled.

Residential houses, via dts news agency

So that the companies do not necessarily have to fall back on reserves in order to be able to pay bills, the hardship program should now enable them to obtain loans from the state development institutes. The loans would be “80 percent secured by the federal government,” said Federal Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD). According to the minister, a total of 1.1 billion euros will be available from the Economic Stabilization Fund by the end of this year.

In concrete terms, the program provides for the assumption of risk for a loan amount of between 500,000 and ten million euros. However, there is no entitlement to funding. The assumption of risk is assigned according to the order in which the applications are received by KfW via the state development institutes.