Germany – Research and development services and related consultancy services – Allgemeine Ressortforschung (ReFo) - Zweite Evaluierung der Bundesfinanzhilfen für den sozialen Wohnungsbau

In accordance with the federal subsidy policy guidelines, it is planned that all financial assistance will be regularly evaluated in terms of the degree of target achievement, as well as efficiency and transparency. Accordingly, Article 13 of the Administrative Agreement on Social Housing provides that the financial assistance will be regularly evaluated by the federal government in cooperation with the Länder. A first evaluation of the programme years 2020 to 2022 is already available. Building on this, a further evaluation for the programme years 2023 to 2025 is to be carried out. This should focus particularly on the aspect of the efficiency of the promotion, both analytically and with regard to the activities of individual Länder and actors to reduce construction costs, against the background of significantly increased construction and financing costs and the resulting increased use of promotional funds per promotional case. This should examine how the most important promotional models and instruments in the rental housing new construction sector are designed for individual investor groups in various Länder and what incentive and control mechanisms exist in terms of construction costs, efficiency and accuracy of the funds used and how they work. Key questions: - How have the promotion results in social housing developed over time? - What structural changes in the promoted housing units can be observed in this context? - How does the use of federal financial assistance in the programme years 2023 to 2025 compare to the programme years 2020 to 2022, and what funds have the Länder used? - On what basis, with what methodological approaches and with what target parameters are the specific promotional conditions determined? What would be the impact of a change in conditions? - What explicit and implicit incentives to reduce construction costs are set by the promotional conditions or guidelines? - What returns on the invested equity and in total can currently be achieved with social housing by the different investor groups? To what extent are returns implicitly or explicitly limited? - How are the different promotional models (also with regard to rent level and binding period) to be assessed from an efficiency perspective? - What recommendations for action can be derived to increase promotional efficiency? The contractor must develop an evaluation concept in accordance with the subsidy policy guidelines, which meets the above-mentioned knowledge interests. Initial proposals for this must be outlined in the offer. Selected analyses from the first evaluation should be continued. As in the first evaluation, the information in Appendices 2-5 of the Administrative Agreement (VV) on social housing should continue to form a central data basis. The above research questions should also be answered on the basis of primary information from the actors involved, in particular Länder ministries, promotional banks and promotional recipients. This must first be obtained within the framework of expert interviews, case studies and, if possible, data sets from e.g. promotional banks. In addition, own cost-effectiveness calculations based on the promotional guidelines and realistic project assumptions should be carried out. In this context, the existing but previously unpublished compilation of the Länder's promotional offers should also be used. This will be made available to the contractor after the contract is awarded for project-specific purposes on a temporary basis via a separate usage agreement. A clear focus of the analyses should be on the rental housing new construction. Other promotional objects or promotional areas can, however, be considered complementarily. Close involvement of the Länder – as in the last evaluation – is indispensable.