Image by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels
By Omid Sobhani
The Bavarian capital Munich remains the most expensive city in Germany with the highest rental prices for apartments in the first quarter of 2025. It’s a major economic and tech hub with giant companies like BMW, Google, and Siemens and has unique proximity to the Alps and lakes. Yet finding affordable housing has become nearly impossible for young people. Students and foreigners who are new to Germany are often struggling to find a place to live.
Meanwhile, many older Germans live alone in their houses, struggling with daily chores and facing growing isolation.
A creative solution, Wohnen für Hilfe (Housing for Help) is attempting to bridge that gap. Launched in cities such as Munich, Cologne, and Berlin, the initiative connects older homeowners with young people in need of housing. The agreement is simple: instead of paying rent, the younger tenant helps with tasks like shopping, cleaning, or gardening. The rule? One hour of help per month equals one square meter of free living space.
For Monkind, name of a Reddit user living in Munich as student, the program has been a game-changer. “I myself live in such a setup. It’s a very sensitive topic. You also need a bit of luck,” he wrote in a post, where many users were sharing their experiences with the model. He emphasized that “clear communication is essential”. The kind of help must be clearly defined in advance. Fortunately, he said, his landlady had been upfront from the beginning.
But for elderly homeowners, the benefits go beyond chores. “My father rents out four rooms,” wrote another user, Anne, “and his tenants help with mowing the lawn, cooking… They even renovated a room together.” She added: “The rent stays low, the house stays maintained. Older people aren’t alone, and don’t face isolation.”
Yet not everyone sees the model as a win-win. One user called it a “double-edged sword”, warning of the potential for undeclared work and tax evasion, especially when the terms of help aren’t formally agreed at the start.
That concern is well analyzed by experts. Professor Johanna Hey, a legal scholar at the Institute for Tax Law at the University of Cologne, told Bayerischer Rundfunk that while the model fills a social need, it raises unresolved legal questions. “The apartment owner must declare the income. And second, minimum wage laws apply. That means this model, unfortunately, doesn’t work at all under current legal conditions,” she said.
The complications in tax are in place and so far there's been no rule in place for this change.
The debate comes as Germany faces an urgent care crisis, with rising costs for eldercare and an aging population putting pressure on public systems. The German government has recently promised a solution by the end of 2025. Until then, small-scale community models like Wohnen für Hilfe are addressing part of the issue.
For many, the housing crunch is very real. Araj, an Indian student studying computer science at the Technical University of Munich, shared his own frustration: “Finding a room has been my nightmare since coming to Germany. You’re not going to find anything good or cheap,” he told Orange Magazine. “I’ve been searching for a flat under 600 euros for six months but everything is 700 or more.”
This is precisely the gap Wohnen für Hilfe aims to fill as it claims to be offering “affordability, and social connection”. While this project doesn’t work for everyone except young people, the project continues to grow, with nearly a dozen of cities now participating, according to the Federal Working Group on Wohnen für Hilfe.
Programs like Wohnen für Hilfe offer not just affordability, but human connection something often missing from traditional renting.
An elderly landlady beams as she describes her experience. “It just makes me happy to talk with her,” she said of her young tenant. “I learn from them, and they learn from me.”
“There has to be mutual sympathy,” said an official from the Wohnen für Hilfe organization. “Otherwise, you can’t live together.”
The model isn’t for everyone. It requires openness, trust, basic German, and a willingness to share space and routines across generations. But for those who embrace it, the rewards go beyond the material.
In the absence of other large-scale policy shifts to address this challenge in the near future and the rising food and housing prices in Germany, for now it’s only elders who are helping young people.
