Stuttgart

Stuttgart's cooperatives are almost all rental. A new member buys Genossenschaftsanteile, shares that carry the right to a flat and are repaid at face value on leaving. In return the member signs a Dauernutzungsvertrag, a permanent right of use. The city's cooperative alliance promises members they can stay a whole life long. There is no resale gain, so the flat never returns to the market. Owner-occupied cooperative flats are rare here.

The idea took root early and in waves. In 1866 the industrialist Eduard Pfeiffer founded the Verein für das Wohl der arbeitenden Klassen (Association for the Welfare of the Working Classes). Today it is the Bau- und WohnungsVerein Stuttgart, a non-profit association rather than a cooperative, with almost 5,000 flats. The Baugenossenschaft Bad Cannstatt followed in 1893, and the Landes-Bau-Genossenschaft Württemberg has built since 1921. Social democrats and trade unionists founded Bau & Heim in 1924. The largest wave came with the refugees after 1945. FLÜWO was founded in 1948 by the refugee Fritz Kleiner, and Neues Heim the same year, in a camp for Danube Swabian families.

Organisation in focus

Bau- und WohnungsVerein Stuttgart

Stuttgart’s oldest non-profit housing association, founded in 1866.

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Organisation in focus

Landes-Bau-Genossenschaft Württemberg eG

Statewide cooperative building since 1921.

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Today's sector falls into three clusters. The post-war and interwar cooperatives hold most of the homes. FLÜWO alone has 12,340 members and over 10,492 flats across 33 sites, not all of them in Stuttgart, while LBG counts over 5,785 across the state and Bau & Heim 2,549. Their problem is renewal, because post-war blocks need deep retrofits or replacement at today's building costs. A second cluster of joint-building groups and small newcomers, such as pro… gemeinsam bauen und leben eG, needs plots more than capital. The third is a handful of Mietshäuser Syndikat houses, collectively owned through a network that can veto any sale. The first, the Linkes Zentrum Lilo Herrmann, was bought in 2010.

The whole sector is building less. Members of vbw, the regional federation of cooperatives and non-profit landlords, completed 31% fewer homes in 2025 than the year before. Its director Iris Beuerle put the reason plainly: members invest less because building costs are what they are. The old cooperatives meet that squeeze with paid-off estates behind them, while the newcomers have none.

The city now names cooperatives as partners rather than bystanders. They sit beside SWSG in the Bündnis für Wohnen (Alliance for Housing). Since 2022 they may also choose between buying city land and taking it on Erbbaurecht, a long ground lease. A federal study of cooperatives as municipal partners describes the same bargain in other German cities. Whether Stuttgart backs it with enough land is now a political question.

Stuttgart is governed by Frank Nopper of the CDU as Oberbürgermeister, the city's lord mayor. Housing sits with the Green Peter Pätzold, mayor for urban development, housing and environment. Their headline programme is the Bündnis für Wohnen, renewed in July 2024, which aims to enable 20,000 new homes by 2033. The city adds cheaper land and a top-up of €300 per square metre for new social flats. On 12 March 2026 the council raised the quotas on city-owned land to 50% social rent, 20% price-dampened and 30% free-market. Pätzold called affordable housing "one of the central social questions in our city".

On private land, the Stuttgarter Innenentwicklungsmodell (SIM, the city's rule for developers who gain building rights) reserves at least 40% of new floor space for social and price-dampened rent. SWSG has 1,243 new flats under construction in 2026, a record for the company. The gap between targets and output is still wide. Hitting the alliance target would take roughly three times the 2025 completion rate.

Much of the toolkit is written in Berlin, and some of it in the state ministries a few streets from city hall. The Bundestag extended the Mietpreisbremse to the end of 2029. The federal Bau-Turbo, a fast-track clause in the Baugesetzbuch (the federal building code), took effect on 30 October 2025. Federal funding for social housing reaches €23.5 billion by 2029. Baden-Württemberg decides where the rent rules bite: its regulation names 130 municipalities, Stuttgart among them. Since May 2026 a Green–CDU coalition under Cem Özdemir has governed the state, with Theresa Schopper as minister for regional development and housing. She inherits a Wohnungsbau BW subsidy programme raised to a record €1.5 billion for 2025 and 2026. The city itself has less room to act. It closed 2025 with a deficit of about €785 million.

Land terms are the city's most direct support for cooperatives. A council decision of February 2022 set the ground rent on residential Erbbaurecht plots at 2% of land value. It also gave SWSG, the cooperatives and alliance partners the choice between buying and leasing. Since 2012 the council has sold plots to Baugemeinschaften (joint-building groups) at a fixed price instead of to the highest bidder. Federal money helps members join. The KfW programme 134 (the state development bank's cooperative-share loan) now lends up to €150,000 per member, with 15% of it written off.

Vacancy is where the city is most often accused of timidity. A bylaw against misusing homes has applied since 2016. By late 2024 it had brought back 389 flats out of more than 1,500 cases, with 720 still open, as the Kontext weekly reported. The tenants' association contrasts that with Munich's 40-plus enforcement officers against Stuttgart's five. For empty offices the main funding line is federal. The Gewerbe zu Wohnen programme (commercial to housing) has €360 million for 2026. A Robert Bosch Stiftung study, Obsolete Stadt, maps how such redundant space could serve the common good.

From our library

Im Leerstand von 11.152 Wohnungen in Stuttgart steckt erhebliches Potenzial zur Verringerung der Wohnungsnot

The tenants’ case on Stuttgart’s 11,152 empty flats.

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The largest future site shows how fragile the pipeline is. The Rosenstein quarter, on railway land freed by the Stuttgart 21 station project, is planned for 10,000 people. The Staatsanzeiger reported in June 2026 that the rail delay pushes it back at least five years. Nopper called the news a "Hiobsbotschaft", a disaster for the city.

Climate goals now compete with the budget. Stuttgart set itself climate neutrality by 2035, but the city now expects to emit about 1 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent that year. Heat pumps rose only to some 3,100 in 2025, a small fraction of the number the city wanted by 2035. The municipal energy-saving programme for homes drew about 300 applications worth some €18 million this spring, and its rates were cut. Baden-Württemberg already requires solar panels on new homes. The cooperatives' timber-hybrid replacement quarters are among the few places where low-carbon building and low rents arrive together.

Tenants and landlords read the same numbers differently. Ralf Brodda, chair of the tenants' association since November 2025, says the city "must live up to its social responsibility" and keep affordable housing available for everyone. The landlords' association Haus & Grund Stuttgart wants the rent brake abolished in the city, arguing it blocks new building and energy retrofits.

IBA'27, the international building exhibition of the Stuttgart region, opens a century after the Weissenhof estate of 1927. There, 17 European architects built a model settlement of 21 buildings to show what modern living could be. The new exhibition asks the same question of affordable, low-carbon neighbourhoods. Its director Andreas Hofer said of one cooperative scheme that what is being built there should be normal in twenty years.

Organisation in focus

IBA27 in Stuttgart

The regional building exhibition, a century after Weissenhof.

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Lighthouse project

Quartier am Rotweg

IBA’27 cooperative quarter of 217 timber-hybrid rental flats in Stuttgart-Rot.

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Quartier am Rotweg is that scheme, and the clearest sign of the cooperatives' second life. Neues Heim and the Baugenossenschaft Zuffenhausen are replacing their late-1940s blocks in Stuttgart-Rot with 217 rental flats in timber-hybrid buildings. Barrier-free homes, childcare and care communities share the site. Nopper called it a project for people of different backgrounds "at fair and affordable rents". It is due to open in the exhibition year.

Quartier Böckinger Straße, also in Rot, is the municipal counterpart. SWSG and the charity Evangelische Gesellschaft are rebuilding a 5.5-hectare estate with around 460 new homes for different groups of residents. They cluster around a shared district centre designed by Hild und K with Studio Vulkan. Completion is also planned for 2027.

Lighthouse project

Quartier Böckinger Straße

SWSG’s IBA’27 rebuild of an estate with around 460 homes.

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The Olga-Areal in Stuttgart-West shows what citizens can force. When the Olgahospital children's hospital moved out, a residents' initiative pushed the city to sell plots at a fixed price rather than to the highest bidder. After 12 years the site holds 224 homes. Seven Baugemeinschaften built 90 of them, and 117 are subsidised, mixing social rent, middle-income rent and affordable ownership.

NeckarPark turns a former freight yard in Bad Cannstatt into a quarter of about 850 homes for some 2,000 people. The city bought the land in 2000 for an Olympic bid that never came. Its IBA'27 plot, Q11, is being built with partners from the housing alliance, cooperatives among them, and mixes subsidised flats with self-financed shared-living groups.

Lighthouse project

NeckarPark Stuttgart

Former freight yard becoming a quarter of about 850 homes.

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Der Kesselhof in Botnang is the smallest and most radical of the exhibition projects. It is a Mietshäuser Syndikat house where several generations live together in renovated buildings, owned collectively and kept off the market for good. It proves the self-organised model can work in Stuttgart, though at the scale of one house rather than a district.

Der neue Stöckach, on a former EnBW utility site in Stuttgart-Ost, is the cautionary tale. It was planned for about 800 homes, 40% of them subsidised, and its designs won praise. The energy company paused it in 2023, citing sharply higher building costs, and it has not restarted. Much of Stuttgart's pipeline hangs on the same arithmetic, which is why the cooperative and municipal schemes that did start matter so much.