Housing benefit

If your private household income is not sufficient to cover the costs of your housing, you may be legally entitled to housing benefit. Housing benefit is granted to tenants as a rent subsidy and to owners of residential property (owner-occupied home, condominium) as an encumbrance allowance.

Please note:
Housing benefit is only granted on application. It is paid from the 1st of the month in which the application is made.

The amount of housing benefit is determined by the size of the family, the family income and the amount of rent or charges to be taken into account. The rent eligible for housing benefit includes the cold operating costs (so-called gross cold rent), but not heating and hot water costs.

The following are excluded from housing benefit payments Recipients of benefits in accordance with the German Social Code (SGB) II and SGB XII, if accommodation costs are already included in their calculation.

To the housing benefit office of your independent city or district. In the cities of Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Fulda, Hanau, Marburg, Rüsselsheim and Wetzlar, please contact the local housing benefit office instead of the district.

You can download a list of housing benefit offices in Hesse (pdf) from the website of the Hessian Ministry of Economics, Energy, Transport and Regional Development. There you will also find a link to a (non-binding) online housing benefit calculator.

You can obtain application forms and information about the proof of income and rent or charges you need to provide from your housing benefit office.

You can find detailed information on the website published by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building under "Housing benefit".