Housing crisis: Students fight for rent in Brandenburg!

Housing crisis: Students fight for rent in Brandenburg!

In Brandenburg, a growing number of students are faced with a serious housing shortage. With the winter semester approaching, many new to higher education are struggling to find suitable accommodations. The situation is particularly tense in university towns such as Potsdam and Brandenburg an der Havel, where rental prices have become unaffordable for many potential tenants.

The pressure on the housing market is clear: The Potsdam Student Union, which is responsible for many university locations in the region, has introduced a freeze on applications for apartments and shared rooms since the end of August. For more than 3,000 applications, there are only 1,000 available places, which further exacerbates the situation. It is clear that housing for students in these cities is severely limited.

Only limited housing options

The available dormitory places in Brandenburg an der Havel have continued to decline. The few rooms that are still rented are often only accessible to students who commute from the state capital Potsdam, 40 kilometers away. "Potsdam is an expensive place. Many students looking for affordable living space came away empty-handed again this year," said a spokeswoman for the student union. Rents in the dormitories range from 225 euros for a simple room to 355 euros for a small apartment, while even higher rents are often demanded on the open market.

The West Brandenburg Student Union can offer a total of 3,182 dormitory places, of which almost 2,500 are available in Potsdam. However, this is only enough for around 11 percent of the people studying there. With over 4,000 new students at the University of Potsdam alone, the demand for living space will continue to increase.

An alternative approach that some students advocate is living with older people or families as part of the “Living for Help” project. This means they receive cheaper rental prices in exchange for support in everyday life. There are currently around 50 such residential partnerships in the area.

Situation in eastern Brandenburg

The housing situation in East Brandenburg, especially in Cottbus, remains tense. The student union there has waiting lists for dormitory places that need to be processed. In contrast, the reopening of a renovated dormitory in Frankfurt (Oder) expanded the housing offering by 107 places, which improved the situation at the start of the semester. In total, the Ostbrandenburg Student Union provides 3,757 places to live in Cottbus, Senftenberg, Frankfurt (Oder) and Eberswalde, which covers 25 percent of the young people studying there.

In order to increase the attractiveness of their locations, both universities pointed out the need for better housing and optimized rail connections. The European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) makes good train connections and a reliable timetable a prerequisite for a successful place to study. For Brandenburg's largest university, the University of Potsdam, the creation of additional housing options plays an equally important role.

The challenges on the housing market for students in Brandenburg are therefore obvious and require urgent measures so that local students do not end up in an even more difficult situation. Details on this representative problem are in an article at www.welt.de to read.