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“Falling revenues and rising rents will no longer work at some point,” emphasized the head of SPÖ.
The head of SPÖ, Pamela Rendi-Wagner, calls for the next rent increases to be suspended for around 500,000 apartments, as in old and community buildings. She warns of a flood of costs for tenants by increasing benchmark rents by about three percent in April. “Falling revenues and rising rents will no longer work at some point,” he told the federal government on Thursday.
To make matters worse, the rental postponements now expire at the end of March and an extension request from the SPÖ was rejected. “A lot of people don’t know what to do next anymore,” Rendi-Wagner said, referring to more than half a million unemployed people and 460,000 in part-time jobs. “In Parliament we have the opportunity to suspend the increase in reference rents. This is not new, it was the last in 2009 and 2016,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Rendi-Wagner warns of “poverty pandemic”
Austria has one of the worst economic recessions within the EU and an increase in unemployment that is twice that of Germany. “We have to make sure that the crisis does not turn into a poverty pandemic,” Rendi-Wagner emphasized.
SPÖ’s housing spokesperson, Ruth Becher, accused the ÖVP of a blocking attitude. Now it awaits an application submitted by her for the implementation of an “inflation relief law under the lease law” and has the support of the current Minister of Justice Werner Kogler (Greens). “It is important that we act quickly now,” Rendi-Wagner added.
Reference rents increase every two years on April 1 due to adjustment for inflation. “With the expected index adjustment of 3.01 percent, the standard value in Vienna would go from 5.81 to 5.98 euros per square meter”, calculates Becher. Just over a week ago, the Chamber of Labor and the tenants association warned of increasing standard rents.
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