From next year, more households are to receive housing benefit. Saxony-Anhalt assumes that the number of eligible households will triple. How are the housing benefit authorities supposed to handle this?
Magdeburg (dpa/sa) – Due to the planned housing benefit reform, Saxony-Anhalt expects the housing benefit offices to have a significantly heavier workload. “Since the group of beneficiaries is to be expanded with the housing benefit reform and everyone is basically entitled to submit an application, a significantly increased number of new applications can be expected,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Infrastructure at the request of the German Press Agency. However, an exact estimate is difficult.
According to the current status, a good 26,000 households in Saxony-Anhalt received housing benefits, the spokesman explained. Most are in Halle and Magdeburg, each with around 3,200 households. It is assumed that the number of households entitled to housing benefit will triple as a result of the housing benefit reform in the country, the spokesman said.
The respective districts and municipalities would have to decide to what extent the housing benefit authorities would have to increase their staff to process the many applications. The districts, urban districts and municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants are responsible for the implementation of the housing benefit law in Saxony-Anhalt.
The spokesman made it clear that the so-called “Wohngeld Plus” would present the responsible states and municipalities with an immense task. In view of a multiplication of the volume of applications and approvals, this reform must therefore be approached with “a sense of proportion and realistic time perspectives”.
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