Augsburg

Augsburg's cooperatives follow the German rental model. A new member buys a Genossenschaftsanteil (a refundable share that makes the tenant a co-owner of the cooperative) and gains a Dauernutzungsrecht (a lifelong right to occupy the flat). Rents cover costs and repayments rather than a return to investors. Nobody can sell a cooperative flat, so a low rent passes intact from one household to the next.

The tradition grew out of shortage. After the First World War the city needed homes fast, and Firnhaberau in the north shows how it improvised. The land had been left to Augsburg by the widow of the industrialist Friedrich August Firnhaber and held in trust for a housing emergency. Settlers began clearing it in 1921. Homes there are still managed by the Siedlungsgenossenschaft Firnhaberau (a settlement cooperative). It sits in the local directory of housing providers alongside the Baugenossenschaft Augsburg, WES eG and several other cooperatives, most of them small and rooted in one district.

Today the sector splits into two generations with different problems. The established cooperatives manage mostly post-war blocks; their task is keeping ageing buildings affordable while paying for insulation and new heating. The newcomers need land and credit in a market of high building costs. WOGENAU is the clearest case of the second group. It was founded in September 2019 with 26 founding members and passed 100 members within 18 months. The Munich cooperative wagnis came west to build here too. So did self-organised Baugemeinschaften (building groups, households that commission a building together and then own or rent it jointly). Federal research on communal living in cooperatives found the same pattern across Germany: new groups bring shared rooms and mixed generations into a form that had grown conservative.

The city's main lever is land. In 2021 it awarded 4 plots on the former Sheridan barracks to the best concepts rather than the highest bids, as an architect's account in a3kultur describes. Whether that one-off becomes standard practice is a question for the new council.

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Gemeinschaftlich wohnen (a3kultur)

An architect's account of the Sheridan concept tenders.

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Housing decided Augsburg's 2026 election. In the March runoff the SPD's Florian Freund unseated the CSU mayor Eva Weber with 56.58% of the vote. He had campaigned on the line "Wohnen hat oberste Priorität" (housing comes first): adding storeys to existing buildings, developing Haunstetten Südwest at scale and founding an apprentices' housing company with fixed low rents. His new city executive mixes SPD and CSU department heads, with his SPD deputy Dirk Wurm running social affairs. The pipeline he inherits is thin. In the three years to mid-2024 the city approved 412 new subsidised flats, while Robert Kern, head of its housing-subsidy office, reported rising demand for loans at 0.5% fixed for 40 years.

The council wants to go further. In June 2026 the SPD/ÖDP/Volt and Generation AUX/FDP/Die Partei groups tabled an "Augsburg Way". Developers could pay a levy instead of building subsidised units. Existing flats would stay rent-bound, and new flats would be sold cheaply to the Wohnbaugruppe. Raphael Brandmiller, who leads the Generation AUX/FDP/Die Partei group, said the city should tackle the shortage "instead of pointing to others' responsibility".

Each level of government holds a different lever. The federal level sets tenancy law: the Bundestag extended the rent brake to the end of 2029. In Augsburg that caps a new let at 10% above the local comparison rent and existing rents may rise by at most 15% in three years. Berlin's new Bauturbo (a fast-track planning law that lets councils approve housing without a new zoning plan) has been debated as the fix for slow permits. Bavaria holds the money through EOF, its income-oriented subsidy, which lowers each tenant's rent according to income. That pipeline is strained. The state company BayernHeim promised 10,000 homes by 2025 and expected about 1,700. The social landlords' federation VdW Bayern reported a funding freeze and building costs 44% above 2019. The city's own levers are land, planning and the Wohnbaugruppe.

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BayernHeim: Wohnungsbauziele werden deutlich verfehlt

Why Bavaria's state housing company fell short of its target.

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For cooperatives the key instrument is the Konzeptvergabe (a concept tender, where land goes to the best project rather than the highest bid), used so far on Sheridan. The Greens' council group wants more of it. Its 2025 housing paper calls for land on Erbbaurecht (a long ground lease that keeps the land public while a project owns the building). It also wants a contact point for cooperative and other common-good projects, and a land-value model binding at least 30% of new homes as subsidised for 40 years.

Vacant homes draw a softer response than in Munich. Augsburg runs a vacancy-management service that helps hesitant owners re-let. It has no Zweckentfremdungssatzung (a bylaw requiring permission to leave homes empty or turn them into holiday lets). The same Greens' paper wants one, pointing to Nuremberg, where it returned almost 100 flats in its first year. For offices, federal money is arriving: Berlin's commercial-to-housing programme earmarks €360m for 2026. Augsburg's large conversions, though, have been military rather than office land.

Climate policy runs alongside. The council's Blue City programme, adopted in July 2022, aims to halve the city's emissions by 2030 against 1990 and make the administration climate-neutral by 2035. New subsidised housing is where those standards land first. The Wohnbaugruppe's newest block is timber-framed to a federal climate-friendly standard, and both Sheridan cooperatives build in wood.

Sheridanpark is where Augsburg's post-military land turned into its most inventive housing. The US Army stayed in western Augsburg for half a century after 1945. Since its departure the city has turned more than 200 hectares of barracks land into neighbourhoods, stitched together by a 4 km green axis, according to a Bavarian land-saving case study. On the last Sheridan plots it tested a different kind of developer.

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Augsburg: Umwandlung militärischer Flächen im Westen Augsburgs

How 200 hectares of US Army barracks became western Augsburg’s neighbourhoods.

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wagnisSHARE was the first to move in, in April 2026. The Munich cooperative wagnis built 46 flats in 3 houses on the site, mixing subsidised and other homes for a multi-generational neighbourhood. Residents share a guest flat, a workshop and roof terraces. The name joins Sheridan to the cooperative's rule of sharing resources.

WOGENAU's timber house next door was the young cooperative's first project. It holds 55 flats, 22 of them income-oriented subsidised, over 300 m² of shared rooms. Ground broke in September 2024 and the last free flat was allocated in June 2026.

Sheridan Park & Junia, a building group, completed three timber buildings on its plot and moved in during 2025. Its architect Frank Lattke describes communal building as "a form of social and economic self-determination, and an investment in the future".

Urmelstraße in Lechhausen shows the municipal route. The Wohnbaugruppe finished 47 flats in three timber-frame buildings in 2026, named after the Puppenkiste's baby dinosaur. The target rent is €14.50/m², but subsidised tenants pay €7 to €9.50/m². Bavaria contributed €2.5 million in grants and a €10.1 million loan. The company's pipeline continues with a student hall of more than 260 places at the Lech bridge and 33 subsidised flats on Brunnenlechgäßchen.

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47 neue Wohnungen in der Urmelstraße

The municipal company's newest subsidised timber block.

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Zeuna-Stärker, a former industrial site by the Wertach north of the old town, brings the state in. BayernHeim planned about 160 affordable flats within a new quarter of some 650 homes on the brownfield site. Its progress will test the company that missed its statewide target.

Haunstetten Südwest is the city's largest bet. On around 200 hectares of farmland in the south, the plan is homes for at least 10,000 residents and 5,000 jobs, reached by tram line 3. The council's brief asks for affordable homes for low and middle incomes and names cooperatives and building groups as partners. The Sheridan plots were the pilot; Haunstetten would show whether concept tenders can work at the scale of a whole district.