The new tenant council With a lot of energy and a thirst for knowledge

The new tenant council is in the starting blocks: the ten members harmonize with each other and are now gradually familiarizing themselves with their voluntary work.

When Mathias Voigt received the news that he had been elected to the Tenants' Council, he was overjoyed. "I really had a permanent grin on my face," he recalls. However, volunteering is not entirely new to him: the 42-year-old lawyer specializing in traffic law has been representing the interests of tenants in relation to HOWOGE and politics as a tenants’ council since 2016. But his re-election was not a matter of course: Eight of the ten members of the recently elected Tenants' Council are new. In addition to Karlshorster Voigt, Kathrin Schwanke from Alt-Hohenschönhausen is still there.

However, the joint work started harmoniously. "Right from the start I had the feeling that we work well together, we approach things with a lot of enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge," says Mathias Voigt. First, the group distributed responsibilities: There is a treasurer, an IT officer and someone who answers tenant inquiries. Voigt himself is chairman, his deputy is Sebastian Lange. In the future, the Rummelsburg real estate expert will also sit on the HOWOGE supervisory board as a voting member and will campaign for the interests of the tenants there. Gertrud Küttner, a retired teacher from Kreuzberg, was appointed as a guest auditor on the supervisory board. All ten members are also contact persons for the tenants' councils in the neighborhoods.

"We want to find the answer to the questions: What would be different if you weren't there? And what can we look back on in five years?” Voigt outlines the challenge ahead. We wish the new tenant council every success!