The Freiburg city administration has approved the development plan for the Metzergrün in Freiburg's Stühlinger neighborhood.

The Metzgergrün is one of the few places in Freiburg where one can still live relatively cheaply. While the average rent per square meter in Freiburg currently costs €15, there are still apartments in the Metzgergrün where tenants pay only €6 per square meter.

The apartments are relatively small, but in a nice location and all have their own garden. So here you can live quite nicely despite a small wallet, which is quite a unique characteristic in Freiburg. Anyone who wants to live so close to the city center and would also like to have some nature on their doorstep usually has to earn a good income. Affordable housing can otherwise be found mainly in neighborhoods like Haslach, Weingarten and Landwasser, which are all pretty far from the city center. The apartments there are also often in a miserable condition.

Freiburger Stadtbau has been planning for some time now to tear down the old houses and build 550 new apartments in place of the 250 old ones. Of these, 50% are supposed to be social housing, although 122 of them will not be built on the currently developed site.

Only 150 social housing units will be built there, the rent of which, according to the current planning, should already be higher than it currently is. So, in this case, the construction of "social housing" means an increase in rent. In addition, the remaining 230 apartments that will be built on the site will be private and owner-occupied apartments. There will be gardens only for those who can afford it. The existing residents will have to give up their green spaces.

The development plan is also designed in such a way that part of the social housing will be built directly next to a railroad track, so to speak, to serve as noise protection for the more expensive homes.

Stadtbau promises not to raise the rent for the first five years, but what happens after that is unclear. It can be assumed that affordable rent will be over by then at the latest. Social housing in such projects has repeatedly turned out to be a farce, whether in Rieselfeld or Dietenbach.

So now the city administration has approved the plan. Many complaints and criticisms had been received, but no points that could call the procedure into question, Stadtbau says.

The fact that hardly anyone in Metzgegrün agrees with the demolition is shown, among other things, by the many signs and banners that residents have put up, as well as their long fight with demonstrations and legal means against the development.

The decision of Stadtbau is made over their heads and does not correspond to the interests of the residents, no matter how socially it is passed out.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)