{"id":28291,"date":"2026-09-25T10:05:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T08:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/housing-shortage-about-105000-students-are-waiting-for-a-spot-in-a-dorm\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T10:36:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T08:36:55","slug":"housing-shortage-about-105000-students-are-waiting-for-a-spot-in-a-dorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/housing-shortage-about-105000-students-are-waiting-for-a-spot-in-a-dorm\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing Shortage: About 105,000 Students Are Waiting for a Spot in a Dorm"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>105,016<\/strong><strong> Students are waiting for a<\/strong><strong>spot in a student housing facility operated by a student services organization<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>11,170 <\/strong><strong>At the Aachen Student Services Organization, <\/strong><strong>10,812 <\/strong><strong>at the Munich Student Services<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>DSW Chairman Anbuhl: \u201c<\/strong><strong>The financial strain caused by rent threatens to<\/strong><strong> and <\/strong><strong>is causing<\/strong><strong> for <\/strong><strong>extremely <\/strong><strong>long waiting lists at<\/strong><strong> the student housing facilities of the<\/strong><strong> student services organizations.\u201d<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Press Release from the Deutsches Studierendenwerk<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Berlin, September 25, 2026.<\/strong> 105,016 students are on waiting lists for a spot in a dormitory operated by a Studentenwerk. This is the result of a survey conducted by the Deutsches Studierendenwerk among its members. The cutoff date was September 15, 2026.<br \/>\nThese waiting lists are particularly long at the student services organizations in Aachen and Munich-Upper Bavaria, with 11,170 and 10,812 students per organization, respectively. Broken down by federal state, the numbers are 38,596 in North Rhine-Westphalia and 19,527 in Bavaria   <strong> <\/strong>A particularly large number of students are on the waiting list for a spot in a Student Services housing hall.<br \/>\nMatthias Anbuhl, the DSW\u2019s executive director, comments:<br \/>\n\u201cRent pressure on the private housing market remains extremely high. Especially at the start of the winter semester, tens of thousands of new first-year students flock to college towns and need affordable housing. The financial strain caused by rent threatens to overwhelm many students and results in extremely long waiting lists at the student services\u2019 residence halls.\u201d  <\/p>\n<p>A new form of social selection is taking place here: It is not talent or interest that determines which university one attends, but rather whether one can even afford rent in the city. This effectively undermines educational equity in Germany. <\/p>\n<p>With their approximately 196,000 dormitory beds, the student services organizations are working to counter this trend. On average across Germany, a bed in one of their dorms costs 330 euros\u2014significantly less than the 510 euros students must pay for a room in a shared apartment on the open housing market. However, based on the total demand for student housing, they can only provide housing for about ten percent of students. The result is these extremely long waiting lists and enormous social pressure on students.   <\/p>\n<p>The fact that the federal government is raising the BAf\u00f6G housing allowance to 440 euros starting in the summer semester of 2027 is an important step; further steps must follow. Even now, this 440 euros is barely enough to find housing in major university cities such as Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt am Main, or Hamburg. <\/p>\n<p>The federal-state program \u201cJunges Wohnen\u201d offers a major ray of hope for the student accommodation market. Doubling the funding starting in 2027 could help usher in a much-needed decade of construction and renovation. However, this requires further consolidation of the program and its vigorous implementation by the states. Bavaria, Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, Lower Saxony, and Saxony serve as role models in this regard. If the framework conditions are right, \u201cJunges Wohnen\u201d could become a game-changer in the medium term\u2014because it empowers student services organizations to create and renovate the urgently needed affordable accomodation for students.\u201d    <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/25-09-26-Tabelle-Wohnheimwartelisten-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">You can find a list of the waiting lists for dormitories here (PDF).<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>105,016 Students are waiting for aspot in a student housing facility operated by a student services organization 11,170 At the Aachen Student Services Organization, 10,812 at the Munich Student Services [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":4181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"expiration_date":"","expiration_date_gmt":"","expiration_enabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"class_list":["post-28291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accommodation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28295,"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28291\/revisions\/28295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stw-muenster.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}