📋 Tender Overview
The “Young Living” project shows practical concepts for revitalizing vacant and listed buildings. The state wants to create attractive and affordable housing in the communities.
“Living space is scarce. It is therefore important that we consider unused buildings when it comes to enabling attractive and innovative living for many generations in our rural communities. A model project carried out in 2021 showed that a certain amount of know-how is helpful in creating an adequate living environment for young adults. We have to take into account how this generation imagines their living environment today. This also includes including empty and listed buildings, repurposing them and offering attractive financing and funding options. The project has resulted in good practice examples for the conversion of empty buildings in communities, which are being presented today with the concepts behind them,” said the Minister for Food, Rural Areas and Consumer Protection, Peter Hauk , at a public conference and excursion with the focus on “Young people Living” in Kirchzarten.
As an interdisciplinary project team, the editors of the 2021 study “SPES eV” , “sutter³” and “K-Point Rural Development” continue to support the model communities from back then and provide them with advice and support.
Successful example of a renovated rectory
“Our model projects show that it often doesn’t take a lot of resources to breathe new life into a vacant property. For example, in Schwäbisch-Gmünd Bettringen, a small group of young adults took on the most necessary renovations themselves and were able to make the empty rectory habitable in a short time and with manageable financial resources. This unconventional but pragmatic interim solution seemed obvious to everyone involved and interested. Not only has new living space been created, but also a village meeting place that is open to everyone and is actively used. We share these and other experiences and stories via the website Junges Wohnen , which was created for this purpose and is managed by K-Point Rural Development. The technical content, for example on possible support models and financing concepts, comes from the project partner sutter³. The website also provides information about current events relating to young living, such as today’s excursion,” reported Ms. Ingrid Engelhart, Executive Chairwoman of SPES eV
These broad-based efforts to highlight the importance of “Young Living” for rural areas are already bearing fruit. Aside from the original model communities, many imitators have already been found. “We create incentives for living in rural areas through special offers for young adults. For example, from May to November 2022, seven communities from three LEADER regions also developed attractive housing concepts for young adults based on an exemplary vacancy in their locality. We will continue to devote ourselves intensively to this important topic for the future. With the concepts of the 'Young Living' project, we strengthen our communities in rural areas and fill vacant spaces with new life. In this way, we are working towards attractive and sustainable town center development and at the same time making a contribution to sustainability and social cohesion,” said Minister Hauk.
“Young living” as a means of combating rural exodus
A lack of attractive and affordable housing can be one of the reasons why young adults do not stay in rural areas or do not return there. The six model communities participating in the project “Young Living: Future-oriented housing models for young adults through the conversion of empty buildings in the town center” (PDF) went through an accompanied process of concept development and preliminary planning in 2021. Suitable vacancies were identified on site, possible financing models were presented and the need for young housing was determined.
Due to the great public interest in the topic of young living and its great importance for the future viability of rural areas, the Ministry of Food, Rural Areas and Consumer Protection is also supporting a follow-up project on young living launched in February 2022 by the project sponsors SPES eV, sutter³ GmbH & Co.KG and K-Point Rural Development of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart . The project, which will run for a good two years, aims to create a comprehensive website on the entire topic of young living, to continually develop it and to deepen the transfer of knowledge through excursions and specialist conferences. In addition, the model communities will be further supported on the way to realizing the developed concepts in order to gain additional experience and knowledge and to share these with the interested public.
