Wohngeld cut from 2027: a third of recipients lose it
From January 2027 the housing benefit that hundreds of thousands of households in Germany rely on to cover their rent is being cut, and by the government's own estimate around a third of current recipients will lose it altogether.
Wohngeld is the state top-up paid to people whose income is too low for their rent but who are not on basic welfare. Pensioners, single parents and people in low-paid work are the typical recipients. The federal government's savings plan takes at least 1.5 billion euros out of the scheme in 2027 and 2 billion a year from 2028. Three changes do the work: the heating cost component is halved, the calculation formula is rewritten, and the scheduled uprating is suspended, so the next increase would not arrive until January 2029.
The consequences are already quantified. About 163,000 households drop out of Wohngeld entirely — roughly 74,000 of them move onto SGB II and 89,000 onto SGB XII, which are the basic-welfare systems Wohngeld is designed to keep people out of. The households most likely to lose the payment outright are the ones currently receiving the smallest amounts, in the range of 50 to 60 euros a month. Building Minister Verena Hubertz has said on the record that a third of current Wohngeld households will fall out completely. In Brandenburg alone about 52,000 households are affected, and the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband there has called the reform a clear step backwards, arguing that Wohngeld reduces poverty precisely and cheaply and that the savings simply shift the cost onto municipalities.
One point matters more than all the others for anyone reading this with an award letter in a drawer: existing awards are not being touched. If you currently receive Wohngeld, the payment you have been granted continues for the period it was granted for. The change bites when your award runs out and you reapply.
So the useful thing to do is to check the end date on your current decision letter and work out whether it falls before or after January 2027. If it runs into 2027, apply for the renewal in good time and do not assume the amount will be the same. And if the calculation leaves you below the threshold, the fallback is a claim under SGB II or SGB XII rather than nothing at all — which matters, because moving onto basic welfare can affect a residence permit and is worth taking advice on before it happens rather than after.