10,900 rent increases: Petition against the city-owned housing association LWB

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The municipal housing association LWB is planning around 10,900 rent increases for 2026 – an all-time high. This will affect more than a quarter of all LWB tenant households. In 2025, there were 5,362 rent adjustments, and in 2024 the figure had already risen to 9,523. Tenant communities in the south of Leipzig, where there had been no rent increases for years, have recently been experiencing something different: regular adjustments that go right up to the statutory limit.

That is why those affected have launched a petition: ‘Stop the rent increases at LWB’, addressed to Lord Mayor Burkhard Jung as the representative of the shareholder, the City of Leipzig.

What exactly is this about? It is not about modernisation, nor about improving standards. The increases are based solely on an adjustment to the local comparative rent in accordance with Section 558 of the German Civil Code (BGB) – within the cap. In Leipzig, this stands at 15 per cent rather than the nationwide 20 per cent by which rents may be increased over three years, because the city itself had submitted a corresponding application to the Free State of Saxony to protect tenants in a tight market. If the city-owned housing association invokes precisely this protective framework as the standard maximum, the purpose of the regulation is turned on its head. Implementing these rent index-based increases is not a necessity. Various housing cooperatives, which refrain from this form of rent increase, demonstrate that there is another way.

LWB is wholly owned by the City of Leipzig. It is not a market player like any private landlord, but rather an instrument of local housing policy. The argument that, as a limited liability company (GmbH), it is obliged to make a profit falls short: the City can set different guidelines at any time via the shareholders’ meeting. It is a political decision – not a legal necessity.

The petition calls for two things, deliberately worded in a restrained manner:

1. To refrain from rent increases under Section 558 of the German Civil Code (BGB), insofar as they serve solely to maximise the rent cap and no modernisation has taken place.
2. Annual transparent reporting to the city council and the public on the scope, distribution and criteria of rent adjustments.

The petition deliberately leaves it to the City Council to decide what form rent adjustments should take in future. The aim is not to prohibit the LWB from making any increases whatsoever, but to put an end to the practice of systematically maximising the legally permissible limits and to bring this practice to light in the first place.

Since its launch on 30 July 2026, around 220 people have signed; the quorum for Leipzig stands at 3,700. The petition drive will continue until the end of January 2027. Anyone who lives in an LWB flat – or who, when it comes to housing policy, does not wish to stand by and watch as a municipal company turns the much-needed tenant protection – which is also the aim of the rent cap – against its tenants – can sign the petition online at openpetition.org/stopplwb.

The author lives in an LWB flat himself, is involved in the petition and writes regularly as a freelance journalist for the Leipziger Zeitung.