ABSTRACT
Neue Heimat was ‘the largest non-profit housing organisation in all of Western Europe’, a model of innovation, co-operation and social responsibility according to Fuerst. The advantages of the German system, its public-private structure, its many channels of development and its flexibility, provided scope for possibly the most extraordinary social housing scandal of the post-war era. Many of the outer estates of the 1960s and 1970s were built by Neue Heimat and its growth and experience served as an international model. Neue Heimat seized eagerly on the government’s encouragement of low-cost owner-occupation. Neue Heimat built a new university complex for the state of Lower Saxony. These ventures brought huge losses as land values collapsed and property markets slumped after the oil crisis. The ‘ring-fencing’ of housing accounts that protected German nonprofit companies did not work in Neue Heimat’s case because of its size and power, its illegal structure, and the willingness of its directors to put at risk the non-profit activities.
