Mönchengladbach

Mönchengladbach's cooperative housing is the classic German rental model, in one institution. GeWoGe 1897 is a Wohnungsbaugenossenschaft (a member-owned housing cooperative) whose tenants are also its owners. Each member buys at least one Geschäftsanteil (the refundable share that pays for membership) and in return gets a permanent right to a flat at cost-covering rent. The cooperative counts 1,700 members holding 4,471 shares. Its homes cluster in Eicken and Windberg, with barely a presence in Rheydt. There are no individual flats to sell and no dividend to extract, so the stock cannot drift back into the market.

The tradition grew up alongside the mills. The Spar- und Bauverein (a savings and building society) was founded in March 1897, when the town was the centre of the Rhineland's cloth industry. Several building societies followed, including a civil servants' association and a small Rheydt cooperative called Unser Heim. In 1942 a Nazi decree forced three of them into one body. The merged cooperative emerged from the war with 135 buildings and 360 flats. From 1950 it even managed the city's own housing for 15 years, until the council set up a municipal company.

Today the sector is a single actor rather than a cluster. GeWoGe describes itself as the only housing company in the city with a cooperative legal form. It builds slowly, adding 10 to 20 homes a year, retrofitting old terraces and replacing worn-out blocks. Across the region the picture is different. The VdW Rheinland Westfalen federation represents around 480 member companies and cooperatives with 1.1 million homes in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. Its 2026 annual press conference reported that members completed more than 30% fewer homes in 2025. Newer forms have barely started. In 2022 a building group at the Maria-Hilf-Terrassen split in two, and one half set out to form a cooperative. Both old and new face the same obstacles: construction costs and land. GeWoGe says no municipal plot has been offered to it in 20 years.

On paper the state treats cooperatives as partners. North Rhine-Westphalia's housing ministry states that cooperatives and other resident-led projects can receive housing subsidies. NRW.BANK passes on a federal loan of up to €150,000 for households buying cooperative shares. The federal alliance's paper on cooperatives as partners of municipalities makes the same argument nationally. The city itself has rested its affordable-housing strategy on its own company, which leaves the cooperative route largely untested in local policy.

City hall's answer to the crisis runs through WohnBau. Lord Mayor Felix Heinrichs (SPD) was re-elected with 63.6% in September 2025, and his party governs in cooperation with the CDU for the 2025–2030 term. In 2023 the council launched a municipal housing offensive. The city gave up a €2.875m dividend from WohnBau so the company could build subsidised homes on its own land. In 2025 state housing loans for Mönchengladbach reached €43.2m for 218 homes, 86 of them new rental flats.

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Mönchengladbach secured €43.2 m for 218 homes, boosting loans to quadruple investment impact.

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Most of the money and the rules come from above. The state raised its 2023–2027 housing programme to €12bn, and its record 2025 funding round backed 13,356 homes with about €2.4bn. Tenancy rules also come from Düsseldorf, the state capital, and here they bypass Mönchengladbach. The state's extended tenant-protection ordinance grew from 18 to 57 municipalities in March 2025, taking in neighbouring Krefeld, Neuss and Korschenbroich but not Mönchengladbach. The city therefore has no Mietpreisbremse (the cap on new-let rents) and no tighter cap on rent rises. Berlin, meanwhile, supplies speed. The federal Bau-Turbo (a fast-track clause in the Building Code, §246e) lets councils approve homes without a new local plan until the end of 2030.

Hardly any shop assistant or train conductor can still afford Mönchengladbach's rents.Patrick Stock, chair of the Mönchengladbach branch of the DGB (the German Trade Union Confederation)

The two camps agree the city needs more affordable homes. They disagree about whether building alone will do it. City hall points to completions, while the unions want Mönchengladbach added to the rent-brake list and rent gouging prosecuted. The city's land policy sits between them. EWMG (the city's development company) sells plots by Konzeptvergabe (a tender scored on the quality of the scheme, not just the price). At the Maria-Hilf-Terrassen the first lot requires at least 20% and at most 40% subsidised homes. Plots are still sold outright, however, rather than let on an Erbbaurecht (a long ground lease that keeps the land public). The city used that tool only to buy back a lease on Europaplatz for strategic reasons.

Vacancy is answered building by building. In October 2025 the council adopted the plan for ’19 Häuser’, a new block at the Hauptbahnhof that replaces Haus Westland. Former military land is not an option. The 471-hectare JHQ Rheindahlen base, handed back by the British in 2013, is planned without housing. Nationally, a federal ministry report on office vacancy counted 11.0 million m² of empty offices in 2024 and trails a commercial-to-housing funding line. Mönchengladbach's low office vacancy means it will mostly convert schools, hospitals and shops rather than towers.

Climate targets add a second agenda. The city aims for greenhouse-gas neutrality by 2045 and in December 2024 adopted an energy concept with municipal heat planning. Heat networks are judged viable in Gladbach, Rheydt and parts of Rheindahlen. The rented stock is where that plan succeeds or fails, and the VdW survey on building costs shows how tight the margins are for the landlords expected to deliver it. That makes WohnBau's serial retrofits and the cooperative's renewable-heated estate the test cases.

Seestadt mg+ is the city's biggest bet. On 14 hectares of former rail land next to the Hauptbahnhof, the developer Catella plans 2,000 homes, 40% of them regulated around an artificial lake. Its chief executive, Klaus Franken, says two-thirds of the tenants move in from outside the city, which is exactly the Düsseldorf overspill the city is courting. So far only the Südviertel stands, with 248 flats finished in 2023. Its tenants complained in 2025 of dirt, noise and rats instead of the promised lake view.

The Maria-Hilf-Terrassen turn a closed hospital into a neighbourhood of about 350 homes on 16 plots. Schleiff Denkmalentwicklung is converting the listed ensemble, while EWMG sells the new plots by concept tender with a subsidised quota. Some plots are reserved for building groups, and that is where a second cooperative could first get a foothold.

GeWoGe 1897's Klimaschutzsiedlung Am Wasserturm shows what the old cooperative can do. The state recognised it as a climate-protection estate, and since the first residents arrived in 2015 it has been heated entirely from renewable raw materials. The same cooperative is now replacing worn-out blocks on Kärntner Straße in Windberg with 14 heat-pump flats. It is modest in scale but shows the sector's patient, members-first way of working.

The former school on Friesenstraße is WohnBau's case for reuse. The municipal company is turning a listed school into barrier-free flats and adding new buildings beside it, with 13 homes in the first phase. Board member Christian Heinen calls heritage protection a new start, not a standstill. It is one of the offensive's first projects alongside Langer Weg and Knopsstraße.

RENOWATE brings factory methods to the post-war stock. With WohnBau it is refitting 48 flats in eight buildings on Heukenstraße and two 1950s blocks on Neusser Straße using serial, prefabricated renovation methods. Serial retrofit of this kind could make the city's heat plan affordable for tenants.

'19 Häuser' will replace the city's most visible void. Haus Westland, a former prestige tower now called ghostly, has stood empty at the station for two decades. With the plan adopted and a new bus station planned alongside, the gateway to Mönchengladbach is about to be rebuilt, though how much of it will be affordable housing is still open.