Published in Schweizer Monatshefte in March 1955, Alfred Amonn’s review essay examines eight reports of the advisory council attached to West Germany’s Federal Ministry of Housing. German experience challenges Swiss reliance on rent restrictions and construction subsidies. His central concern is the coordination of housing finance, rents, household needs, and social assistance: increasing construction alone cannot ensure an adequate distribution of housing.
Die Wohnungsprobleme in Deutschland sind im wesentlichen keine anderen als bei uns.
English translation: The housing problems in Germany are essentially no different from those among us.
Germany’s larger difficulties make its experience relevant to Switzerland rather than grounds for dismissing it. Amonn contrasts German efforts toward systematic reform with Swiss inaction. He also values the council’s ability to bring researchers and practitioners with divergent positions into shared deliberation. Agreement grounded in investigation becomes an institutional lesson for Swiss policy.
So etwas ist möglich, wenn man es versuchen will, und das wäre sicher auch bei uns eine wichtige, allen Beratungen und Entscheidungen vorausgehende Aufgabe.
English translation: Such a thing is possible if one is willing to attempt it, and that would certainly be an important task among us as well, one preceding all deliberations and decisions.
Following the reports in sequence, Amonn begins with capital interest and housing finance. German capital scarcity supports temporary interest restrictions, saving incentives, credit direction, and public financing. Switzerland’s circumstances differ, particularly because lower interest rates affect more than construction. Cheaper borrowing can ease housing costs while increasing the resources required to sustain funded welfare provision.
Wir befinden uns da in einem schwierigen Dilemma: ein Sinken des Zinssatzes würde die Wohnungskosten in den Neubauten wesentlich vermindern, zugleich aber den Aufwand für Fürsorgeleistungen, die auf dem Kapitaldeckungsverfahren beruhen, beträchtlich erhöhen.
English translation: Here we find ourselves in a difficult dilemma: a fall in the rate of interest would substantially reduce housing costs in new buildings, but at the same time would considerably increase the expenditure on welfare benefits which rest upon the funded capital-cover method.
This dilemma establishes the need to judge housing measures through their wider economic and social effects. The second report supplies a complementary diagnosis of rent control. Frozen rents in older buildings produce inequalities between comparable dwellings, discourage mobility, encourage tenants to retain unnecessary space, and impair maintenance. Correcting rents therefore requires assistance for households unable to bear increases, rather than preserving distortions for all tenants.
The third report considers smaller, simpler emergency dwellings as a response to limited building capacity. The choice is between fewer fully satisfactory homes and more homes providing immediate relief, without abandoning minimum standards. The fourth concerns the distribution of reconstruction burdens, including recognition of creditors’ currency losses. The fifth explores financing sources, notably an earmarked levy on rent increases whose proceeds would initially support social housing before passing progressively to owners.
The sixth report’s comparison of capital, interest, and rent subsidies provides the essay’s conceptual pivot. Financing construction and assisting needy households are distinct tasks. Rent assistance can make rent correction socially tolerable while enabling low-income families to secure adequate space. Unlike generalized subsidies, it can concentrate support where needed. Amonn seeks an economically self-supporting housing sector, but treats this goal as requiring a coherent transition. Assistance must reflect household composition, income, appropriate space requirements, and affordable contributions.
The seventh report extends this reasoning to family-appropriate housing. A dwelling should sustain family life, not merely provide shelter; neither ownership nor a single building type meets every family’s needs. Rental housing offers flexibility as employment, location, and household size change. Amonn also stresses an indirect means of reducing overcrowding: constructing smaller dwellings can release larger homes occupied by smaller households. Redistribution nevertheless depends on families being able to afford the housing that becomes available.
The final report distinguishes appreciation of good housing from willingness to pay for it. Public policy has raised expectations, while controlled rents and generalized subsidies have weakened recognition of housing costs as an ordinary household responsibility. Amonn supports a coordinated economic and educational response: movement toward cost-covering rents, assistance directed to financially vulnerable tenants, and acceptance of appropriate housing expenditure by households able to pay.
The conclusion gives this reform program its social rationale. Inadequate housing threatens social integration, making housing provision a central social problem. Amonn’s organizing argument is that market normalization and social protection must be designed together. The German reports offer Switzerland both substantive proposals and a model of informed policy formation linking finance, mobility, differentiated construction, and targeted aid.
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