Housing Shortage in Augsburg: Left Party Faction Leader Elisabeth Wiesholler Wants to Bring the Fight for Affordable Rents to City Hall

Elisabeth Wiesholler leads the new Left Party faction in the Augsburg city council. In the DAZ series "CityShapers," where people who actively shape Augsburg have their say, she describes how The Left wants to approach its work in city hall: The housing issue is to become the main focus, supplemented by regular contact with citizens and a closer integration of council work, social counseling, and campaigns.

According to information from the interview, the inaugural meeting of the new city council took place only a short time ago; there, Wiesholler was sworn in and directly elected as faction leader. For the first time, The Left is entering city hall as a faction with five mandate holders. This starting position is politically relevant because it gives the party more opportunities to speak and submit motions in the city council—and thus also the chance to continuously bring housing policy concerns into committees and the plenary.

Housing to Become the Core of Faction Work

Wiesholler describes the transition from a more activist environment to municipal parliamentary work as an adjustment—without separating it from her previous practice. "Politics doesn't just take place in parliament, but on the street, together with the people," she says. For her faction, she derives a working style from this that combines classic city hall craft (inquiries, motions, committee work) with low-threshold contacts outside the city council.

In terms of content, Wiesholler sets a clear focus: housing, rents, and the fear of losing one's home. She describes a sense of despair that, according to her own account, she experiences repeatedly in her daily work. At the same time, she not only looks at new construction but also at the existing stock—and thus at the question of how existing housing can be used, secured, and kept affordable.

She identifies a central problem mechanism via the stock of social housing: According to Wiesholler, social housing loses its binding after 20 years; this has been happening gradually in Augsburg for years. The statement points to a political conflict of objectives that is visible in many cities: Even if newly subsidized apartments are built, the number of permanently price-controlled apartments can stagnate or decline if older bindings expire.

For city policy, it thus becomes crucial whether it manages subsidy programs, municipal housing companies, and occupancy rights in such a way that affordable housing is not only created sporadically but preserved in the long term.

Regulation Against Misuse as a Lever—and the Debate on Vacancy

As an immediate priority, Wiesholler names a regulation against misuse of housing. She describes it as "currently our most important goal" and links it to two approaches: on the one hand, recording and sanctioning misuse, and on the other, taking more consistent action against vacancy and uses that withdraw housing from the regular market—for example, through short-term rentals via platforms like Airbnb.

In this context, Wiesholler mentions a figure that is explosive in the housing policy debate: In Augsburg, "around 3,000 apartments are vacant long-term, that is, for over a year." This is her account and thus initially a political finding that she uses to justify an instrument.

Whether this figure matches official surveys would be crucial for further debate—because such numbers raise concrete questions: What types of vacancy are meant (renovation, inheritance, speculation, unclear ownership)? What intervention options does the municipality actually have? And how high would the administrative effort be to check cases and conduct procedures in a legally secure manner?

The Faction Relies on Counseling, Consultation Hours, and Committee Work

Wiesholler states that she sits on the building committee as well as the youth, social, and housing committee. There, she wants to systematically place housing policy issues. At the same time, she announces that the city council faction will offer monthly citizen consultation hours. In addition, cooperation with "Linke-Hilfe" is to be continued, which she describes as free social counseling.

The political approach behind this: Cases from counseling should not remain at individual assistance, but serve as a seismograph—that is, provide indications of where there are structural problems, where rules do not reach, or where tenants are at a disadvantage compared to landlords and billing practices. This very bridge between everyday experience and municipal politics is a recurring motif in Wiesholler's account—and at the same time a challenge, because experiential knowledge must first become reliable, verifiable questions for the administration, municipal companies, or private actors.

Ancillary Costs, Metering Obligations, and the Question of the "15 Percent Lever"

A current focus of counseling is the issue of ancillary costs. Wiesholler cites as an example the situation when there are no consumption-based heat meters in central heating systems. Under certain circumstances, according to her statement, a flat-rate refund or reduction of 15 percent of heating costs may be considered.

For readers, it is crucial here: Such claims depend not only on annoyance over high costs, but on formal requirements of the heating cost ordinance and the specific billing situation. Whether and how a reduction can be enforced may vary from case to case—among other things, depending on whether consumption-based recording was required and reasonable, how billing was done, and what evidence is available.

Wiesholler uses the example mainly politically: as an indication that many affected people do not know or enforce their rights, and that this creates a mandate for clarification and targeted inquiries to large landlords.

At this point, she links the topic to the housing group (WBG): She says she has the impression that more than 400 units could be affected there—but emphasizes at the same time that the faction first wants to establish "certainty" about this. Thus, this remains explicitly a suspicion from counseling practice and not a confirmed finding. Politically, this leads to what Wiesholler suggests as the next step: review, narrowing down, and then—if indications are confirmed—parliamentary inquiries or initiatives in the city council.

What Is Concrete About the Plans—and What Remains Open

What is concrete for Wiesholler are mainly the direction of work and choice of instruments: housing as a focus, a regulation against misuse as a short-term goal, regular consultation hours, and the integration of counseling and committee work. She also clearly formulates a second guiding principle: transparency in the city council. Decisions should become more comprehensible, and citizens should be able to see more easily how they can get involved.

What remains open is how quickly this can be translated into majorities. The interview does not reveal whether a motion for the regulation against misuse has already been submitted, what majorities in the city council would be realistic, or what a concrete timeline and implementation path should look like—for example, with regard to personnel, controls, and procedures. Also, for the ancillary cost and metering issues mentioned, clarification of the actual scope is the main priority for now.

Wiesholler describes her move into city hall not as a break, but as a continuation of political work under new conditions. Whether this strategy will have measurable consequences will, in her view, be shown above all by the housing issue: whether counseling experiences, committee work, and public campaigns actually become actionable steps—and whether it is possible to address pressure points such as vacancy, misuse, and expiring social housing ties in such a way that affordable housing in Augsburg is not only promised but secured. She formulates her political hope as follows: "My hope, of course, would be that after this period we have an affordable Augsburg for everyone and that housing overall has become more affordable." That is a goal—not the finding of a change that has already occurred.