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 a defeat before the Hessian State Social Court (LSG). In a previously unpublished ruling dated November 21, 2018 (e.g., case number L 6 AS 185/18), the 6th Senate of the LSG decided that a housing market survey report from 2014, submitted by the job center, was inconclusive and therefore inapplicable. This is evident from a judicial note issued by the 4th Senate of the LSG on January 21, 2019, which extensively quotes and endorses the 6th Senate's ruling.
The Hessian State Social Court (LSG) based its ruling primarily on the fact that the Hamburg-based firm Analyse und Konzepte, commissioned to prepare the expert opinion, erred in law by assuming the entire Werra-Meißner district as a single comparison area despite significant regional differences. Furthermore, the raw data provided by the firm was so inadequate and tantamount to a complete lack of information that the court could not remedy the deficiencies in the housing market survey even through its own investigations.
Therefore, in determining reasonable housing costs, the court, in accordance with the jurisprudence of the Federal Social Court, did not rely on the job center's limits of reasonableness, but rather on the values in Section 12 of the Housing Benefit Act (WoGG) plus a 10% safety margin in rent level I.
“The figures in the 2014 report by the firm Analyse und Konzept were absurdly low even at the time of its publication, 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 Hessian State Social Court has now also followed our position, which we have been asserting in court for years, regarding the inconclusiveness of the report,” says attorney Sven Adam, who represents numerous social welfare recipients affected by benefit cuts. “The decision of the 6th Senate was evidently so clear that an appeal to the Federal Social Court was not permitted. In my opinion, a complaint against this denial of leave to appeal filed by the Job Center has virtually no chance of success,” Adam concludes.
The judicial notice from the 4th Senate dated January 21, 2019 can be found here:
