Düsseldorf

Almost every Düsseldorf cooperative is a rental cooperative. Members do not own their flat. They buy a Genossenschaftsanteil (the share a member buys to join, repaid on leaving) and in return hold a lifelong right to rent at cost. At the Düsseldorfer Bau- und Spargenossenschaft (DüBS) the entry share is at least €1,400. Rents follow costs rather than the market, and surpluses stay in the buildings. It is the same model the national cooperative federation's facts and figures on German cooperatives describe for the country as a whole.

The tradition was born of an industrial boom. Düsseldorf grew from 70,000 inhabitants in 1872 to 100,000 by 1882, and working families could not find rooms. On 6 May 1898 citizens founded the Düsseldorfer Spar- und Bauverein (savings and building association), today's Düsseldorfer Wohnungsgenossenschaft (DWG). The same year civil servants set up the Beamten-Wohnungs-Baugenossenschaft (BWB), now open to every profession. Railway workers built their own through the Eisenbahner-Bauverein (EBV), and WOGEDO (Wohnungsgenossenschaft Düsseldorf-Ost) has housed the eastern districts since 1919. Several grew out of a trade or an employer rather than a political movement.

Today the sector falls into two clusters with different problems. The first consists of the five large, century-old societies. Their obstacle is cost. Across the VdW Rheinland Westfalen (the federation of housing companies and cooperatives in the Rhineland and Westphalia), members completed 3,607 homes in 2025, down more than 30%. Rising building costs keep stalling new construction, and the federation's director, Alexander Rychter, wants planning and permits standardised so that serial and modular building can bring them down. So the big societies increasingly grow by buying finished buildings and sites. The second cluster is small and self-organised: Baugemeinschaften (building groups of future residents) and resident-led projects that the city's housing office tracks and advises. A recent example is a subsidised mixed-generation house of 14 flats on Talstraße in Friedrichstadt, finished in 2025. Their obstacle is land, not management, as a handbook on collective, self-organised building argues for German cities generally.

From our library

In Nordrhein-Westfalen: Baukosten bremsen Wohnungsneubau weiter aus

Why the region's cooperatives cut new construction by a third in 2025.

Read more →

The city has courted both clusters. In April 2017 it signed the Düsseldorfer Bündnis für genossenschaftliches Wohnen (Düsseldorf alliance for cooperative housing) with the five societies and the VdW. The cooperatives pledged rents at least 15% below the local comparative rent. The city promised to look for building land for them. It was a local version of the partnerships a federal study of cooperatives as partners of local government had recommended a year earlier. Whether land actually follows is now a question for the city's housing politics.

Düsseldorf's answer to the crisis is written into two documents. In mid-2023 Mayor Stephan Keller of the CDU (the Christian Democrats) proclaimed the Wohnungsbauoffensive Düsseldorf 2030 (housing construction offensive). Its target is at least 8,000 homes by 2030. Keller won a second term in a run-off on 28 September 2025 with 60.45% of the vote against the Green candidate, Clara Gerlach. In December 2025 the CDU and the Greens signed a coalition agreement that tightens the rules.

From our library

Gemeinsam für Düsseldorf – Koalitionsvertrag CDU und Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Düsseldorf 2025

The CDU–Green programme that sets the 50% public-benefit quota and concept-tender rules.

Read more →

On private land, developers must now meet a Gemeinwohlquote (public-benefit quota) of 50%. They can still build half the scheme as subsidised flats, or swap up to 20 percentage points for other public-benefit uses such as bought-in allocation rights or staff housing. On city land, concept tenders are decided entirely on housing criteria. At least 80% of the homes must meet the quota, and 40% to 60% must be subsidised. The city's own Impulsprogramm (a municipal top-up loan) lends €2,000 per m² interest-free for 15 years if the starting rent stays at or below €12 per m². The coalition also promises three new soziale Erhaltungssatzungen (social-preservation statutes that restrict luxury refurbishment) and more Housing First places.

Each tier of government pulls a different lever. The federal government sets tenancy law. The Bundestag extended the Mietpreisbremse to the end of 2029, and the 2025 Bauturbo (a fast-track amendment to the federal building code) lets councils approve housing without a new zoning plan. A Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung debate on the Bauturbo asked whether speed alone can solve the shortage. The state pays and enforces. North Rhine-Westphalia's housing ministry, the MHKBD (Ministry for Home Affairs, Local Government, Construction and Digitalisation), approved €2.4 billion for 13,356 subsidised homes statewide in its 2025 funding round. Yet its minister, Ina Scharrenbach, has said plainly that "the rent brake in its current form does not work" and wants tougher criminal-law tools. The city holds land, permits and enforcement. Its coalition wants the power to prosecute rent gouging under the WiStG (the Economic Offences Act) and a portal where tenants can report excessive rents directly.

From our library

Bundestag: Mietpreisbremse verlängert

The federal extension of the rent brake to 2029.

Read more →

For cooperatives the decisive tools concern land. The coalition promises to target "alternative housing forms, cooperatives and other public-benefit actors" in every Konzeptvergabe (concept-led land tender, scored on quality rather than price). It will also adjust Erbpacht (ground-lease) terms for affordability, and tenders may be won on the lowest starting rent. These are the instruments a federal study of public-benefit housing policy identified as the ones that keep land affordable for good.

Empty offices are the obvious reserve. The coalition commits to tackling vacancy "systematically" and to extending municipal subsidy to office conversions. It will also cap short-term letting at 56 days a year under a revised state housing-protection law. Federal help comes through KfW (the German state development bank), whose programme 266, Gewerbe zu Wohnen (commercial to housing), opens in summer 2026. The BMWSB's report on office vacancy (from the federal ministry for housing, urban development and building) sets out the case. The ministry reckons about 1.8 million m² of office space could become flats across seven cities, Düsseldorf among them. An ifo study of home working and office demand cautions that only part of any surplus is physically convertible. The Seestern in Lörick, a 520,000 m² office district, has had planning guidelines since 2019 steering it towards mixed use.

From our library

Schriftlicher Bericht des BMWSB zum deutschlandweiten Büroleerstand

Federal evidence on office vacancy and the conversion programme.

Read more →

Climate goals set the frame. Düsseldorf aims for climate neutrality by 2035, and the coalition adds net-zero soil sealing and "Umbau statt Abriss" (conversion before demolition). A planned deck over the Münchener Straße would add homes without sealing new ground. The long-held estates of the cooperatives and the SWD are where retrofit targets bite hardest. Serial renovation at Wohnungsverein Hagen, a case study from nearby Hagen, shows one cooperative route. Plattform-E collects the leaner Gebäudetyp E (simplified building standard) methods that could cut the cost of both.

Kiefernstraße in Flingern is where self-organised housing in Düsseldorf began. In 1981 the first residents moved into empty flats built for workers of the Klöckner steelworks. When the council announced demolition plans, newcomers occupied the rest. The city finally signed tenancy contracts in 1987. In 2008 those contracts were extended indefinitely. Around 800 residents of up to 45 nationalities have lived on the street, which is now better known for its murals than its barricades. It proved that a threatened block could be kept by the people living in it.

The Düsseldorfer Wohnungsgenossenschaft shows the traditional form at its largest. It has more than 11,000 members and nearly 8,000 homes. In 2013 it took over 800 flats from Rheinbahn, the city's transport company. In autumn 2025 it bought 117 flats in Grafental and a building site on the Hansaallee. When new construction is too expensive to start, buying finished stock is how a cooperative keeps growing.

WOGEDO, the eastern districts' cooperative, adds around 4,500 homes and more than 10,000 members in Gerresheim, Wersten and Garath. Garath, a post-war satellite town, is one of the districts the coalition has kept in the city's urban-renewal programme, so the cooperative's estates there sit inside a wider neighbourhood repair.

Wohnen mit Kindern – wmk3 is the building-group version. On a former industrial site in eastern Düsseldorf, future residents planned 30 rental and owner-occupied homes together. They added a shared garden, a public playground and a ground-floor community room, heated by a combined heat and power plant with solar panels. Projects like it are the proof that residents can commission their own housing when they can get hold of a plot.

The Glasmacherviertel in Gerresheim is the cautionary tale. Glass production on the 35-hectare site ended in 2005. A 2017 plan promised about 1,400 homes, 500 of them affordable. Then the land passed from Patrizia to the Adler group and on to LEG, and nothing was built. In April 2025 the Greens asked the city to consider buying it. By September the mayor was listing it among the private sites finally moving forward. Twenty years of stalled speculation explain why the coalition now names urban development measures and pre-emption rights as tools.

The Kennedydamm-Center is the adaptive-reuse test. The 1972 office block will be stripped back to its frame and rebuilt as about 240 flats of around 60 m² each, with a kindergarten and a primary school. A Dutch investor is putting in more than €100 million, with completion planned for 2028. Whether conversions like it can also be affordable is the question the city's extended Impulsprogramm now has to answer.

The Mieterverein Düsseldorf completes the picture from the tenants' side. With around 34,000 members, it co-publishes the city's Mietspiegel (the official local rent index) with Haus und Grund Düsseldorf, the landlords' association, and commissions the Mietenmonitor. Its data turned the rent brake from a statute into a measurable promise, and the coalition has pledged to work with it on rent monitoring.

Organisation in focus

Mieterverein Düsseldorf

Mieterverein Düsseldorf, the tenants' association.

Read more →