As night fell, security arrived. Cooking, eating and showering in the mathematics building at the TU Berlin were still okay for the property management. However, when the students spread out their sleeping bags and got ready for bed, they crossed a red line. “Sleeping overnight is equated with living, and that is not allowed in a university building,” says Jesko Lippke.
The doctoral student studied urban design at the TU Berlin and took part in the interdisciplinary research project “Campus as Commons” last winter semester. It is self-organized and deals with the conversion of existing buildings into non-profit housing; This is what the English term “commons” stands for. The initial thesis: Modular installations, reuse and community organization offer alternatives to lengthy new construction projects and vacancies.
See F.A.Z. articles more often in your search results
F.A.Z. prefer on Google
Master's students from the fields of architecture, urban planning and urban design wanted to demonstrate this using the example of their own university. In the TU's mathematics building, they transformed four seminar rooms on the seventh floor into a living laboratory for temporary student living, separated the sleeping area from the living area, installed a temporary kitchen and provided a large table for communication. “We have provided the ‘proof of concept’, you can live here,” says Lippke, still sounding disillusioned six months later.
“Excessive standards”
“In the end it was a little frustrating for us,” explains the research assistant. Many stakeholders thought the project was great. “But at the same time, no one could give us concessions.” Lippke would like to see excessive standards questioned and legal bases changed so that empty offices can also be turned into living space in universities. “There needs to be more push at the political level.”
Politicians have definitely recognized that young people who are training and studying need to have affordable housing. This is shown by the special “Young Living” program, for which the states are responsible and which the federal government co-finances: through modernization and new construction measures in social housing, more than 20,000 residential places for students and trainees have been created in three years. “There is an upswing, even if not all countries are implementing it at the same speed,” says Matthias Anbuhl, board member of the German Student Union, commenting on the program.
Saxony has shown flexibility and first renovated and then built new dormitories, thereby making a good 2,500 modern dormitory places possible. In Bavaria there were more than 3,700, in Hesse almost 800, and in Bremen zero. This has to do with funding guidelines that first had to be introduced in the smallest federal state, not with a lack of need, as Anbuhl makes clear.
He sees a gap: on the one hand, a small increase of 9 percent in state-funded dormitory places, and on the other hand, 48 percent more study places. “The social infrastructure was not taken into account when expanding universities,” says Anbuhl. Currently, only one in ten students can enjoy accommodation in the student unions and thus an average rent of 318 euros. Anbuhl believes that a supply rate that is twice as high is necessary - and is pleased that the federal government will double its proportional funding amount to one billion euros annually from 2027.
Hamburg has big plans
In order to get money from the “Young Living” program, the states have to co-finance their projects: an additional 30 percent of self-financing is mandatory; on average, the states add the same amount on top. Some made significantly more, says a press spokesman for the Federal Construction Minister. “Up to a thousand percent cross-financing like in Hamburg.” The Hanseatic city has big plans; it wants to create 6,000 new residential places through public and private commitment by the next decade, half for students and the other half for trainees. Although almost five times as many people in Hamburg attend a university as a training company, the Senate wants to strengthen dual vocational training and those who come from outside the city should be able to afford it.
However, that will still take some time: just over 200 trainee accommodations have been completed and occupied, and 840 are still under construction. The focus is on conversion and expansion work on school property. The city is currently building its own dormitory on a vocational school campus and is developing the “Bildungshaus+”, a combination of dormitory and educational facility that is to go into series production. The pilot project is intended to combine trainee living and daycare: a hundred children run around on the ground floor during the day, while young adults live and sleep above. But can this work well? At least they want to ensure different access routes in the new building; parents and small children use the school property and the trainees use the neighboring residential area. The student union will provide additional places, and Hamburg has opened the statutory earmarks for people in vocational training.
Matthias Anbuhl also finds this idea charming: trainees and students under one roof. However, the needs are different; the studies are focused on large cities, the training takes place everywhere. In addition, the pressure on the insufficient number of dormitory places increases if student accommodation is opened to other target groups.
A dormitory for trainees and students
A family-run nursing service from Flensburg is currently building a dormitory with 46 places for nursing trainees and students, also with federal funds from the special program. Builder Stefan Boysen is concerned with practical solutions to the shortage of skilled workers. This is large on the German-Danish border, and the pull from higher wages in the neighboring country is high. Boysen started recruiting trainees from abroad five years ago. “90 percent come from Vietnam.”
So far, the newcomers have been accommodated in the care facilities or in a town house that the entrepreneur bought specifically to bridge the gap. Now he wants to centralize accommodation, offer German trainees who no longer want to live at home an affordable alternative and ensure synergies between theory and practice. “It’s not just us who benefit from this, the hospital has already asked,” says Boysen.
In ten months, the city of Flensburg turned a meadow into land ready for construction and made it available to the entrepreneur on a long-term lease. That's record-breaking, even if the trainees would like a construction pace based on the Vietnamese model, says Boysen and laughs. For him, the investment was worth it. “We no longer have a problem with skilled workers.”
Trainee works as part of economic development
This could be a model for other companies, but not necessarily a business model: “It’s only worthwhile if you have a lot of trainees,” explains Boysen. For small companies, a merger, called a trainee organization based on the student model, can be worthwhile. In Hamburg, a non-profit foundation is responsible for this, and in Munich, a non-profit association, which is primarily backed by the city. The goal is to build a thousand residential units, built by the municipal housing association on municipal land, mostly single apartments with a mini kitchen, private bathroom and communal area. A good half has been completed and a third has been rented to small or medium-sized businesses. “It is an aspect of economic development,” says Anno Dietz, board member of the Munich Trainee Works.
When it comes to rent levels, the Bavarian capital is still the front runner. This affects people with fixed-term employment contracts who cannot find a place to stay, as well as companies that cannot find young talent. A basic rent of 330 euros is a pound that the dental practice or craft business can profit from - and a comparatively cheap advertising measure, says Dietz.
The rent for the trainees is fixed and the same for everyone; However, companies have to pay compensation for the market rent, around 200 euros per month. There are more applications than places, the draw decides, no company is allowed to rent more than five residential units and for no longer than six years. “It works,” says Dietz, citing a survey among residents. “80 percent come from outside, and almost 30 percent say that they would not have started their training in Munich without this offer.”
Vacancies in hotels, offices and universities
The model has found imitators in other federal states. The Federal Ministry of Construction wants to respond to this in October with a federal advisory network and will only announce details at the start. It is also still withholding figures for the “Business to Residential” funding program from July. Just this much: “The program is off to a good start,” says the ministry spokesman. That's not surprising: since working from home became widespread, there has been a lot of vacancy in hotels, offices - and even universities. And at the same time creative ideas on how living space can be created through conversions, extensions and additions to sealed areas. Examples include the Münster Student Union, which is building a student housing complex on a former large parking lot, and the Vorderpfalz Student Union: As part of a public-private partnership, it has added a dormitory with around 200 spaces to a branch of the discounter Aldi Süd.
There are two million square meters of empty office space in Berlin. Architects have ideas about what could be done with it: “We would like to convert a state-owned vacant property for 20 years using minimally invasive measures,” says Eike Roswag-Klinge. The professor at the TU Berlin and President of the Berlin Chamber of Architects believes it is important to use empty space for living space, but at the same time warns against investors who would then demand high prices. “Politicians urgently need to take action here, set clear framework conditions and, for example, set a rent cap.”
Roswag-Klinge has been Vice President for Sustainability and Campus Development at the TU since April; and thus one of the stakeholders from whom the students of “Campus as Commons” would have hoped for more support. “We think projects like this, in which students themselves become active, are really important,” assures the professor. This also applies to our own campus, even though there is no real vacancy there. “On the contrary, we are currently renting a lot of space that we would like to sell back in order to reduce costs,” says Roswag-Klinge. The vacancy in the mathematics building that the students drew attention to is due to water damage. The corresponding wing is still unusable, says doctoral student Jesko Lippke. On the way to the office he passes a hotel that has been empty for years and is now scheduled to be demolished. It might have been easy to turn it into a student housing project.
