Living in big cities Lots of tenants at the Load limit

Status: 15.06.2021 12:51 p.m.

The high rental prices in many large cities mean that many tenants are on the verge of financial problems. Scarce income and housing are a bad mix, as a recent study shows. When it comes to rent, many households in large cities have to raise so much money that they are above the 30 percent mark of household income. This is the result of a study published by the union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation. According to this, 49.2 percent of the around 8.4 million households that rent in Germany’s major cities are above this threshold. A good quarter of households have to spend at least 40 percent of their income on rent including heating and ancillary costs. Almost twelve percent of large city households even required more than half of their income for rent, i.e. rent including heating and ancillary costs.

06/10/2021

Bremen at the top

“For social scientists as well as real estate experts, a rent burden quota above 30 percent of household income is problematic, especially for households with lower incomes, because then there is only relatively little money left for the rest of life,” says the foundation’s study. Many landlords would also draw a line here because they doubted that tenants with less income would be able to afford their apartment in the long term. In Cologne, for example, the proportion of households that have to live with a rent burden rate of more than 30 percent is 46.4 percent. In Berlin it is 43.8 percent. In Bremen, the share is greatest at 47.5 percent. For the study, a research team led by urban sociologist Andrej Holm from Berlin’s Humboldt University evaluated the latest available data from the 2018 microcensus.

05/27/2021

Unfortunately, poorer households more so

Overall, according to the study, the financial burden on tenants has decreased over the past few years, because even with residents of large cities, incomes have increased more on average than housing costs. The mean exposure rate of tenant households fell in 2018 from 31.2 percent of income in 2001 to 29.6 percent. For many poorer households in particular, the situation has hardly relaxed, for them rent continues to be a particularly big financial problem. The authors see a further “polarization” of the housing situation. A comparison over time from 2006 to 2018 also shows “that social inequalities in the area of ​​housing have worsened and high rental costs have solidified”.

FAQ 08/22/2019

Overload rate decreased slightly

The Federal Statistical Office had also analyzed the burden on households with housing costs. According to his data, almost 14 percent of the population, i.e. around 11.4 million people, lived in households that were financially overburdened by high housing costs. The authority sees an overload of housing costs when a household spends more than 40 percent of the available income on housing. This applies regardless of whether the person concerned is renting or living in their own four walls and paying off a loan, for example. According to Destatis, the overload rate has decreased slightly since 2014.

09/23/2014

There are no apartments

The Böckler study comes to the conclusion that the housing shortage in large cities has been “at best slightly alleviated” despite increased construction activity. Above all, there was a lack of small and inexpensive apartments, and the supply had become significantly scarcer over the years. Nationwide, there is a supply deficit of over 1.5 million apartments, which would be missing even with a hypothetically assumed optimal distribution of living space in large cities, explained Holm. The German Tenants’ Association is also calling for more apartments. A few days ago, he asked the next federal government to invest heavily in social housing and a nationwide six-year rent freeze. The federal government must provide a “much-needed breather for all tenants” until more new apartments are built. According to the tenants’ association, at least 30 percent of rental apartments would have to be in public or cooperative management in order to curb the price spiral. At present, every second tenant household in large cities is afraid of no longer being able to pay for the apartment, the association president, Lukas Siebenkotten, had determined.

05/06/2021

More income would help

Study author Holm advocates a multi-pronged approach: In addition to instruments to protect existing rents, among other things, social and non-profit housing “should be considerably strengthened with the most permanent rental agreements possible,” he advised. Another crucial key to social housing provision, however, is the income situation of the tenants. Without effective measures to dissolve the widespread low-wage sector, social housing cannot be guaranteed in large cities, according to Holm.

Corona vaccine Which slows down vaccine production

Status: 14.06.2021 8:11 a.m. Corona vaccine is still scarce in Germany. The production of the vaccine has been running at full speed for months. What makes it so difficult to manufacture quickly in large quantities? From David Zajonz, WDR In theory, anyone in Germany has been allowed to be vaccinated for a week if they want to. In practice, more precisely in the doctor’s office, many people who want to be vaccinated receive the same information over and over again: “We would like to vaccinate you, but unfortunately we do not have enough vaccine.” In vaccination centers in North Rhine-Westphalia, there are currently no initial vaccinations at all due to supply bottlenecks. Almost six months after the start of the corona vaccination campaign in Germany, vaccines are still in short supply. The frustration of many people who have not yet received a vaccination is correspondingly great.

Previous production “absolutely sensational”

Nevertheless, the speed of vaccine production is enormous, believes Rolf Hömke from the Association of Research-Based Drug Manufacturers (vfa). It normally takes several years to produce a new vaccine on a large scale: “Judging by all the experience of previous vaccine projects, it is absolutely sensational how quickly the additional production was built up,” says Hömke. To clarify, he cites two figures: Before Corona, according to the World Health Organization, a good five billion vaccine doses were produced worldwide every year – against tetanus, measles and many other diseases. On the other hand, more than two billion vaccine doses had been administered in the fight against Corona by early June. According to current company information, more than 700 million vaccine doses of BioNTech / Pfizer’s most frequently used vaccine in Germany alone have been produced and shipped worldwide – up to three billion by the end of the year.

There is a lack of personnel and materials

There are several reasons why vaccine production is not progressing any faster. The production is complex, says Udo Reichl, an expert in the production of vector vaccines at the University of Magdeburg. “Vector vaccines are produced in bioreactors,” he explains. “Building a new production facility with bioreactors can take one to two years.” Therefore, production cannot be ramped up at will. Manufacturers also struggle to find qualified personnel. In addition, there is a lack of materials that are needed for production, according to vfa spokesman Hömke. “For example, there is a lack of spare parts for the production systems, sterile plastic covers and special chemicals.” Lipids, i.e. fats that are needed for mRNA vaccines, are particularly popular, says Hömke. “A large manufacturer of lipids for vaccines told us that at the beginning of 2020 they expected a few kilos of these lipids to be in demand. Now they can sell a few tons of them.”

background 05/26/2021

Pharmaceutical companies work together

In order to be able to produce faster, the pharmaceutical companies enter into an unusually large number of partnerships. A prominent example is the collaboration between the small Mainz research company BioNTech and the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The French manufacturer Sanofi, on the other hand, whose own vaccine project has stalled, plans to soon produce BioNTech / Pfizer’s vaccine in its Frankfurt plant. Another example: BioNTech has taken over its plant in Marburg from the Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Novartis – including its employees. It takes a long time to build new systems, explains vaccine expert Reichl. Conversely, converting existing production facilities is much easier.

March 31, 2021

Worry about poorer countries

The joint efforts of the pharmaceutical companies mean that the vaccine shortage in this country should soon be over: “In Europe we will see a gradual relaxation in the supply of vaccines over the summer,” believes Reichl. However, he worries about the supply of poorer countries. “A large part of the world population still has hardly any access to vaccines. If we need further vaccines in Europe to vaccinate against new mutations, these in turn will not be available for other countries.” So it could happen that Europeans and North Americans will be vaccinated three or four times while people in other parts of the world are still waiting for their first shot. It is therefore all the more important, according to Reichl, to set up further vaccine productions in poorer countries.

interview 04/26/2021

By C. Haentjes, C. Huppertz, I. Dippmann and S. Kloppmann, mdr The Heart Center Leipzig is one of the leading specialist clinics for heart medicine in Europe. But staff is so tightly planned here that emergencies often cannot be accepted, say various doctors at the clinic mdr news magazine Exakt. You want to remain anonymous; they fear losing their jobs – and legal consequences. The doctors report, among other things, that almost every third day the emergency control center should be signaled that they should not be approached. “It is the case that our intensive care unit cannot fulfill its care assignment for a large part of the time and has to cancel the admission of acutely ill patients,” says a doctor who wants to remain anonymous. “We have to cancel patients who have an appointment for a routine admission and put them off at some point without looking at them. It’s a lottery if I don’t know the patient.” There are always patients who die on the waiting list, said the doctor.

For treatment in another federal state

This is not only the case at the previous highs of the corona pandemic – it also occurs in normal emergencies: heart attacks, acute cardiac insufficiency or pulmonary embolisms. Such emergencies require immediate treatment or valuable time is lost. For example in the case of a so-called aortic dissection: a cardiac surgical emergency in which the chance of survival drops by five percent every hour. A clinic in Leipzig asked the heart center about this. Without success, says another doctor, who also wants to remain anonymous. “This patient could not be admitted to the clinic because it was not possible to operate or monitor an operated patient. For personal reasons. He had to be transported far away. To another federal state.” mdr Exactly ask at the clinic. She replies in writing: “We are aware of the case. This transfer was (…) rejected by us due to the situation. (…) We had a very busy intensive care unit that day.” The clinic admits that there have also been cancellations from the rescue control center, and at the same time emphasizes that this only affected non-life-threatening emergencies. The clinic denies all other allegations made by the doctors. Any capacity bottlenecks are due to the corona pandemic. But there have long been disputes – also in court – about overtime regulations.

Further downsizing planned?

Across from mdr Exactly the heart center confirms plans to cut staff. There are plans of this kind in other Helios clinics as well, says the chairwoman of the Marburger Bund doctors’ union, Susanne Johna: “In fact, we hear from our members in almost all regional associations that the Helios group should cut medical positions. It seems that way That Helios plans to cut about ten percent of the doctor’s positions in the company. And that means that the doctors who stay will have to work even more overtime. ” Obviously, it’s about profitability. Internal reports that mdr Exactly show that the heart clinic’s profit in the Corona year 2020 was 23 million euros before interest and taxes. That is an increase of 43 percent compared to 2019. The shareholders are promised higher dividends. Nevertheless, cuts are also planned in the Leipzig Heart Center. According to information from mdr Exactly as many doctors as possible should reduce their working hours to 95 percent. Fixed-term contracts are reported to expire in April. That would be in the middle of the third corona wave – i.e. exactly when the need for staff is particularly high. The clinic, however, speaks of June.