Starting in January, housing benefit is to be increased by an average of 30 euros. In Berlin, recipients often wait more than half a year for approval.
Housing benefit is rising – but so is the waiting time Photo: Markus Pfaff/imago
BERLIN taz | Richard Behrend waited seven months for his housing benefit application to be processed. At the end of last year, the 54-year-old submitted his application to the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district office. Despite confirmation that all the necessary documents had been submitted, he had not received any money by June. To bridge the waiting period, Behrend took out a loan. “But I didn’t get any further help, and at some point my account went into the red,” he told taz. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Households whose income is too high to receive citizen’s allowance, but not enough to cover the rent, can receive housing benefit under certain conditions. The amount is currently an average of 370 euros per month. As the Federal Ministry of Construction announced on Wednesday, the Federal Cabinet decided on Tuesday to increase housing benefit.
This is intended to offset the rising costs of rent, energy and daily needs. On January 1, 2025, it is set to rise by 15 percent, an average of 30 euros. According to the Ministry of Construction, around 1.9 million households will be eligible next year. 40 percent of the recipients are families, around 48 percent are pensioners.
Housing benefit is adjusted every two years, most recently last year. The problem: The “Housing Benefit Plus” reform passed at the time is leading to an overload of district offices in Berlin and very long processing times. Like Richard Behrend, many people have to wait months for their application to be processed.
Authorities cannot keep up
As of January 1, 2023, the group of eligible people was significantly expanded by raising the income limits, among other things. According to the Federal Statistical Office, immediately before the reform, around 600,000 households in Germany received housing benefit. Now there are more than three times as many.
As a result, the number of housing benefit applications has risen enormously. In Berlin alone, according to the Senate Department for Housing, 14,209 new applications were received in the first four weeks after the law came into force – more than twice as many as in January of the previous year. In May of this year, over 43,000 households received housing benefit, twice as many as in the same month before the reform.
The average processing time for housing benefit applications in Berlin was still nine weeks in December 2022, according to a response from the Senate administration to a query from Left Party MP Niklas Schenker. A few months later, it was already 15 weeks. The negative leader is the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district office: Here, the average processing time between June 2023 and May 2024 was as much as 26.8 weeks – over half a year.
This was a big problem for Richard Behrend. Of the 1,500 euros he earns as a social worker, 900 euros go towards rent every month. “And my wife can’t work until we’ve found a kindergarten place for our youngest son,” he explains. The 54-year-old is entitled to around 600 euros in subsidies for the rent of the apartment in which he lives with his wife and two children. This is money that he depends on, but hasn’t received for months. In addition, the application has to be submitted again after 18 months, and the waiting starts all over again.
No reductions without notice
Until their housing benefit is approved, applicants not only have to wait for their money, but also for the decision. Without this, they cannot get the discounted S-Bahn ticket for people with low incomes or take advantage of leisure activities at a reduced price.
“This summer, too, many housing benefit recipients in Berlin will not be able to get into the swimming pool at a reduced rate because the authorities cannot process the notifications in time,” criticizes the State Poverty Conference. It is demanding that notifications be automatically extended until follow-up applications have been processed.
The Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district office explained to taz that the long processing times were due to the authorities being overloaded. This was due, among other things, to the simultaneous entry into force of the Housing Benefit Plus Act and the introduction of the Citizens’ Allowance.
The Senate had promised the districts 160 additional positions to process housing benefit applications. However, the majority of these were only advertised and filled after the reform came into force – if at all.
Applications unnecessarily complicated
For the housing policy spokesman for the Left Party in the House of Representatives, Niklas Schenker, the backlog in the district offices is self-inflicted. “The Senate and the districts could foresee that the housing benefit reform would result in significantly more people submitting applications,” Schenker told taz. “Nevertheless, no adequate preparations were made.”
Schenker calls for the vacancies in the districts to be filled quickly in order to counteract the overload in the housing benefit offices. In addition, the application process and processing are unnecessarily complicated. The Left Party politician is not only calling for the housing benefit process to be made less bureaucratic, but also for the introduction of multilingual applications in simplified language.
Anna Nowak* works in a social counseling center in Kreuzberg. Some of her clients have been waiting for their housing benefit application to be processed for over eight months, she says. There is therefore an urgent need to simplify the application process. “The housing benefit has to be constantly recalculated as soon as income changes. Documents then have to be submitted.” Instead, a period could be set in which income is considered, similar to the child benefit.
In urgent cases, those affected can apply for citizen’s allowance in parallel with the housing benefit application in order to bridge the time until approval. However, this is a complicated process, since citizen’s allowance and housing benefit cannot be received at the same time, says Nowak.
*Name changed
