The government says it will solve the problem regarding the shortage of apartments by setting aside 0,4% of the GDP until the end of its mandate. That’s around 170 million euros per year - double the figure compared to how much has been invested until now. The biggest shortage of apartments is recorded in Ljubljana, Maribor, Koper and Kranj.

"The plans are here. We’re talking about short-term renting, long-term renting, and renting with the later possibility of making a purchase," says Aleš Prijon, a state-secretary at the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning. He says one of the solutions is also housing cooperatives. "One very interesting model is a smaller housing neighborhood, which is being built at Ljubljana’s Rudnik and is intended as a cooperative for young people. The city has given the land, the state has provided the funding, good loans, and helps out even now with taking out other commercial loans from banks," says Prijon and adds that the model is a novelty in Slovenia, but already well established and functioning in the developed world.

An unregulated housing sector in the interest of owners
Tanja Šarec from the Association of Tenants of Slovenia says housing cooperatives are nothing new. "Cooperatives have been functioning successfully for 100 years in Switzerland, and in former Yugoslavia they were also very successful. But even young people, who try to get an apartment through cooperatives, first have to have a starting capital." The state will reportedly serve as a loan guarantee for young precarious workers in order for them to be able to take out loans for purchasing their first apartment. The Housing Fund of the Republic of Slovenia will build two thousand new apartments, mostly for rent, in the next two years in Ljubljana, Maribor and Kranj. The apartments would be rented for a so-called cost rent, which will be 30 percent higher than the price for non-profit apartments, which hasn’t changed for 15 years now. In that way the housing fund is to acquire more funding for new investments. "Even now, owners of real estate, real estate agencies and real estate institutions, have all taken part in preparing the new legislation. And what’s their interest? The less the apartments, the higher the prices. Owners are not interested in having a regulated housing sector, because the more confusing it is, the higher the profits," is Šarec’s opinion.

The biggest shortage of apartments is in the capital
In Ljubljana there is currently a shortage of 4,200 apartments. The public housing fund of the Municipality of Ljubljana has built only 1,500 in the last ten years. Sašo Rink from Ljubljana’s housing fund says that "in the next four-year period we expect, in optimal circumstances, the construction of up to 1,500 housing units, of course together with real estate purchases on the market". The situation in Maribor is currently even worse: "In the last 10 years we purchased 20 apartments, and then we sold most of them for the public fund to operate," said Tanja Vindiš Furman from the public inter-municipal housing fund in Maribor. But she did add that big plans were in the making: "In the future we plan to build on Korenčkova Street, where we plan to construct 65 apartments. Of course, it all depends on the financial input, how much of the investment we’ll be able to cover, and how the local communities will understand our investment." In Germany, where half of the people live in rented apartments, they passed a law three years ago curbing the rise of rental prices on the market. In a three-year period the renting price for an apartment must not rise by more than 20 percent. In some places in Ljubljana, renting prices have jumped by 20 percent this year alone.