Rent arrears can arise due to insolvency and may lead to the loss of your accommodation.
If you receive citizen's income and are at risk of losing your home due to rent arrears, the responsible municipal job center may, in certain cases, take over your debts upon request. This support is usually provided in the form of a loan. In exceptional cases, you will receive a grant from the job center that does not have to be repaid.
In order to receive this support, one of the requirements is that you are unable to pay the rent arrears on your own. The decision on whether you receive support is always made on a case-by-case basis, whereby it is checked whether all the requirements for taking over your rent arrears are met.
As a rule, only actual costs can be covered, so no lump sums are approved. The responsible authority checks whether the costs of your accommodation are reasonable according to the applicable guidelines and whether there are any special circumstances in your individual case that require a deviation from the guidelines.
The reference values are higher the more people live together in one accommodation and care for each other. This is called a "benefit community." A benefit community means that the people not only live together, but also pay for food and other items for each other. A benefit community includes:
- Persons aged 15 and over,
- Married couples who are not permanently separated
- registered same-sex partners who do not live permanently separated,
- persons in a community of responsibility and mutual support ("marriage-like community") or
- children who are younger than 25 and unmarried.
If you are over 25 years of age, receive citizen's income, and live with relatives or in-laws in one apartment (for example, parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, or siblings over 25 years of age, with your own children and foster children who are over 25 years of age) and share expenses, you are considered a household community. This means that you share the costs of rent, food, and other household expenses, for example.
If people do not form a community of need but live in a household community, the responsible job center will only consider the rent share for each resident when assessing the appropriateness of the accommodation costs. This means that the accommodation costs are shared by all members of the household community.
If your local job center comes to the conclusion that you will use the money for something other than to pay off your rent debts, the payment will be made directly to your landlord.
This is particularly the case if
- there are rent arrears that lead to termination of the tenancy agreement,
- electricity or gas bills have not been paid, resulting in your electricity or gas being cut off,
- you are unable to use the money to pay off your rent arrears due to illness or addiction problems, or
- there are indications of debts.
There is no legal entitlement to have your rent debts covered.
