Zug,20.04.2017

Four housing cooperatives and a Catholic foundation

It has been announced that four Zug housing cooperatives have joined together to form the Housing Cooperative Interest Group of Zug (IG WBG). Its chairman, Peter Niederberger, said that it has sufficient funds available to start building, the problem is finding appropriate land.
 
However, rather than support the initiative for affordable housing in the referendum next month, the organisation feels more can be achieved through negotiation with the authorities rather than by any new law, a move welcomed by Mathias Michel, the director of the Cantonal Department of Economic Development.
 
Andreas Lustenberger, a parliamentarian of the Alternative Green party of Baar, who is on the committee of the affordable housing initiative, was also pleased to hear of the setting up of the IG WBG, bearing in mind it has similar goals. However, with only 5% of housing stock in the canton regarded as affordable at present, he feels only the enactment of a new law will improve it.
 
The Zuger Zeitung also reported, separately, on the contribution a Catholic organisation had made to affordable housing over the past 25 years.
 
The St Wendelin Foundation was set up in 1992 and since this time it has made a major contribution to providing affordable homes in the municipality of Baar, with more than 100 flats built.
 
These flats have been built in stages over the years with 45 flats for rent and 10 owner-occupied ones initially built on the Eggried area of Allenwinden. Further development here in 2008 provided an additional 26 flats. Then, in 2013, another 42 flats were able to be built in conjunction with a local housing cooperative in the Inwil area of the municipality.
 
The board of the foundation lays particular emphasis on the development of a lively community spirit covering all age ranges in the accommodation, to which end a community room has been set up in this latter development, with residents themselves able to determine what goes on there.
 
As the chairman of the foundation, Andreas Weber, said, “In setting up these developments we feel we are fulfilling our obligations with regard to social responsibility,” adding at the same time that the healthy financial state of the foundation meant that it could well imagine embarking on further such developments in the future.