In the long-running dispute over the limits of reasonable housing costs for social welfare recipients in the Werra-Meißner district, the job center and the district have now suffered several defeats in the main proceedings before the Kassel Social Court. The 3rd Chamber, under the direction of the Kassel Social Court's director, Vasco Knickrehm, ruled in several judgments published on February 19, 2018 (Case Nos.: S 3 AS 580/15, S 3 AS 680/15, S 3 AS 527/16, S 3 AS 45/16 and S 3 AS 102/17) that a housing market survey report from 2014, submitted by the job center, was inconclusive and therefore inapplicable. In the main proceedings, some of which have been pending since October 2015 and have been extensively conducted, the Social Court of Kassel has therefore ordered the Werra-Meißner Job Center to grant significantly higher benefits for accommodation costs in the area of basic income support for job seekers in the period from 01.7.2015 to 31.2017 than before.
The plaintiffs, a 28-year-old single mother and her 7-year-old son, moved to the Werra-Meißner district in 2015 and into an apartment deemed too expensive by the job center. Although even the job center could not offer the plaintiffs an apartment within its own limits of what was considered reasonable, the benefits department reduced their payments by €61.89 per month from the actual housing costs. The job center justified the reduction with an expert opinion from the company Analyse und Konzepte, dated March 2014, which had established the limits of reasonable housing costs in the Werra-Meißner district based on supposedly valid surveys from 2013. Several appeals against the validity of this expert opinion are pending before the Hessian State Social Court (e.g., case numbers L 4 AY 11/17 and L 4 SO 171/17).
The 8th Chamber of the Social Court of Kassel initially declared the so-called A+K expert opinion from March 2014 to be conclusive in accordance with the jurisprudence of the Federal Social Court (e.g., judgment of March 17, 2016, file number: S 8 AS 447/14). However, the 3rd Chamber has now agreed with the plaintiffs' extensively reasoned argument that the expert opinion incorrectly defines the comparison area. In determining the reasonable housing costs, the court now bases its decision on the values in Section 12 of the Housing Benefit Act (WoGG), plus a 10% safety margin for rent level I, in accordance with the jurisprudence of the Federal Social Court. As requested, the court therefore ordered the Job Center to pay the actual housing costs, amounting to an additional €61.89 per month.
“The figures in the 2014 report by the firm Analyse und Konzept were absurdly low even when published, and there was and still is hardly any rentable housing in the Werra-Meißner district at the calculated rents. It is more than gratifying that the Social Court has abandoned its previous ruling and accepted our assessment of the report's inconclusiveness,” said attorney Sven Adam, who represents the plaintiffs, expressing his satisfaction with the outcome of the proceedings. “It is regrettable that the Werra-Meißner district has once again commissioned Analyse und Konzepte to produce a new report,” Adam concluded.
The 12th Chamber of the Social Court of Kassel, however, adopted this new view in judgments dated March 21, 2018, and ordered the Werra-Meißner district to grant higher housing allowances in the area of basic income support for people with reduced earning capacity and the elderly (Case Nos.: S 12 SO 112/16, S 12 SO 168/16 and S 12 SO 139/17). The written grounds for the judgments have not yet been published.
