Taxpayers fund rents in Zurich’s disputed Sugus buildings

Taxpayers are covering some rents in Zurich’s disputed Sugus buildings, where five people in the asylum system live, according to SRF. The Asylum Organisation Zurich (AOZ) confirmed the five residents; SRF also found that five other new tenants receive social assistance, but the city’s social services did not comment.

Conditions in the buildings have worsened in recent months, with noise from Airbnb guests and break-ins in basements. One tenant showed SRF a smashed apartment door found in a basement and said she had called police after seeing a woman with bloodshot eyes, suspecting domestic violence.

The tenancy mediation office ruled that the mass termination of 105 leases was abusive. However, around two-thirds of the tenants have moved out since December 2024, amid claims of harassment by the property owner, Intuiva AG. The company’s sole board member, Regina Bachmann, inherited three of the nine buildings and initially announced a complete renovation. The case over the terminations is pending before the Higher Court.

Three men from Afghanistan and Ethiopia who have temporary admission each rent a single room in a four-and-a-half-room apartment and share its kitchen and bathroom. They found the rooms themselves and provided their rental agreements to the AOZ. SRF found that Intuiva does not rent the rooms directly: it uses a short-term rental company, which in turn sublets to a Pakistani man. Bachmann did not respond to a request for comment.

The AOZ pays the maximum of 1,200 francs gross per room each month. The three rooms therefore cost taxpayers 3,600 francs a month, about twice what the entire apartment cost before the tenants were given notice. The AOZ said the current leases held by the people it supports are new, separate and independent contracts.

The AOZ said there was no legal basis to categorically exclude particular landlords from new rental agreements, and that doing so would limit housing options for people receiving social assistance.

Another concern is the installation of partition walls to divide open-plan living and dining rooms into separate bedrooms. Tenants said walls had been added in five apartments. The city’s building-permit office would not say, citing data-protection rules, whether applications had been filed.

Under Zurich’s planning and building law, a kitchen in an apartment with at least three rooms must have a window. The partitions mean that is no longer the case in the affected Sugus apartments. Intentional violations can be fined up to 50,000 francs.