Siggi11 - KüfA Recipes

However, creating living space for students was by no means the reason why the state was interested in the property. Rather, it was and still is of strategic interest due to its location in the university district and its immediate proximity to the central lecture hall building Kupferbau. Even if there is still no concrete need to expand the university on this site, the theoretical idea remains. As internal documents from the Tübingen Office for Property and Construction (VBA), which manages the building for the state, show, this need can take any form, no matter how questionable: In 2002, for example, there were plans to demolish the house and designate the site as a parking lot for the surrounding university buildings.

However, all of this also led to the house being completely neglected as living space in the 40 years that it has been owned by the state. Although it continued to be rented out, major, necessary renovations were either not carried out or only sparsely. As far as we know, only the heating system has been partially renovated since 2002, when the VBA certified that the building was in an inadequate structural condition. The fact that the VBA is now once again writing off the house as being in need of renovation is solely the responsibility of the office itself.

The last few years

There is no question that the building is in need of renovation in some places. Contrary to the residents of the building, however, the VBA only became interested in this fact again in 2022. At that time, the VBA was involved in a legal dispute with a tenant on the top floor who had lived there since the 1970s and was presumably a thorn in the VBA's side due to his open-ended tenancy agreement. Although the tenant in question won the legal dispute, he subsequently decided to move out of the apartment after further discussions. At the same time, the VBA did not extend three other contracts - all other contracts in the building were and still are limited in time with questionable reasoning - one on the first floor and two on the top floor. As the VBA also refused to issue new rental contracts for the now vacant rooms, 4 out of 12 rooms were empty from this point onwards. A year later, in the summer of 2023, the four rooms on the middle floor followed suit, whose residents moved out for various reasons and were denied the opportunity to re-let their rooms. As of now and over the last winter, 8 out of 12 rooms were empty, with only three rooms on the first floor and one in the attic still occupied. The already unpleasant gas and electricity price situation became even more unpleasant, as not only did the premium to be paid now have to be divided between fewer people. The largely empty and poorly insulated house also meant that the per capita consumption of the residents was forced to increase. Any requests for support in this situation were blocked by the VBA, although both the vacancy and the condition of the house are entirely their responsibility.

The residents' association

At the latest when we, the remaining residents, were informed that our tenancy agreement had been extended for the last time, we approached the VBA with the question of what the plans were for the future of the house and the property. As our requests for talks were also blocked or answered inadequately, we began to make plans for possible self-administration of the building. As early as February 2024, we approached the VBA as an association with our interest in buying the property, but were again rebuffed, and subsequent inquiries were only answered by legal advisors. However, we wanted to present