Germany's housing crisis is weighing ever more heavily on tenants. In a survey conducted for the German Tenants' Association (Deutscher Mieterbund, DMB), 58 percent of respondents said their housing costs had risen in the past twelve months alone. Almost one in two had cut back on leisure activities and holidays as a result, and almost as many on clothing, furniture or household appliances. The housing crisis is now cutting "deep" into everyday life, the DMB said on Tuesday.
"Housing is becoming a poverty and downward mobility risk for more and more people," said DMB President Melanie Weber-Moritz. "And the welfare state increasingly has to cushion what is going wrong on the housing market." The housing crisis, she said, is turning into a welfare state crisis.
One in four tenants is saving money on healthy food because of higher housing costs, according to the survey. Fifteen percent are economising on their own health, for example on medication or dental work. Twenty-nine percent of tenants are worried that they will no longer be able to pay their rent in future, and one in two fears that they would not find an affordable replacement home if they needed one.
The figures also point to thin financial buffers: more than one in four tenants could hold on to their home for a maximum of three months following a sudden loss of 40 percent of their income – for instance through illness or separation. Ten percent could keep paying the rent for less than a month in such a situation.
Developments on the rental market affect a considerably larger share of the population in Germany than in other countries. According to the DMB, more than half of the population here lives in rented accommodation – almost 53 percent. Among people affected by poverty, the figure has now reached four out of five.
Weber-Moritz called on the federal government to tackle the causes of a "broken housing market", to limit rents, to create social housing "and to protect people from losing their homes". Anyone who wants to relieve the burden on the welfare state "must finally invest in permanently affordable housing".
Stefan Körzell, deputy chairman of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), made similar comments. He also drew attention to the shortage of homes: "According to the Bau-Monitor 2026, Germany is now short of around 1.35 million homes, while the construction of new housing continues to decline." This "is intensifying the pressure on rents", he said, and the federal government must take countermeasures.
The Left Party's parliamentary group in the Bundestag stressed that the DMB rent report must serve as a "wake-up call for an inactive federal government". "What is urgently needed is a nationwide rent cap and a public investment programme for the large-scale creation of non-profit and cooperative housing," said Caren Lay, the group's spokeswoman for housing policy.
For the rent report, the DMB analysed official statistics and current academic studies and commissioned the polling institute Forsa to carry out a representative survey of 1,021 tenants.
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