The long-running legal dispute concerning the applicability of the so-called F+B report from 2009 was finally decided by the Federal Social Court (BSG) after five years. In a decision dated November 28, 2014 (Case No.: B 14 AS 215/14 B), now published and obtained by attorney Dominik Räder, the judges in Kassel dismissed the appeal filed by the Göttingen district against the Lower Saxony-Bremen State Social Court's (LSG) refusal to grant leave to appeal in its judgment of April 29, 2014 (Case No.: L 7 AS 330/13). The BSG thus upheld the established case law of the Hildesheim Social Court, which has jurisdiction over Göttingen, and the Lower Saxony-Bremen State Social Court, that no conclusive data on the housing market exists for the Göttingen district. Nevertheless, the district had unlawfully reduced the housing costs granted to several social benefit recipients in the years 2009-2011 based on the expert opinion.
Since March 2013, and with an index adjustment in November 2014 extending beyond January 1, 2015, the district has been using the "determined" values from a new expert report to reduce housing costs in the social welfare sector. However, this report, this time from the Hamburg-based company Analyse und Konzepte (A+K), is once again the subject of legal proceedings before the Hildesheim Social Court.
“ The report improperly conflates various municipalities into a single comparison area, fails to consider Göttingen’s specific characteristics as a university town, and its findings are based on estimates derived from average figures from 2006 that weren’t even collected in Göttingen, ” summarizes attorney Sven Adam, addressing just a few of the numerous criticisms of the so-called A+K report. Together with attorney Victoria Lübeke, also from Göttingen, and in collaboration with economic geographer Dr. H.-D. von Frieling, Adam drafted a 44-page counter-statement to the report, which, however, focuses on…
https://anwaltskanzlei-adam.de/goettinger-wohnungsmarktgutachten/
The document is available for retrieval. It also refers to previous case law issued by the Lower Saxony-Bremen State Social Court (LSG) in preliminary injunction proceedings concerning the A+K expert opinion (decision of August 12, 2014, file number: L 11 AS 647/14 B ER). In that case, the LSG criticized the arbitrary formation of comparison areas and declared the expert opinion inapplicable.
The consequence of this is the application of the established case law of the social courts, namely the determination of the limits of appropriateness based on the values in § 12 WoGG, taking into account a 10% safety margin.
Especially for families, the effects of unlawful cuts to social benefits are sometimes considerable. Even the increase in benefit rates announced by the district as of January 1, 2015, based on the index update following analysis and concepts from November 2014, does not meet the legal requirements and continues to lead to unlawful and, in some cases, significant reductions in social benefits.
For further questions, please contact attorney Sven Adam using the known contact details.
