Innsbruck withholds housing allocation information from ombudswoman

The City of Innsbruck is refusing to provide the state ombudswoman’s office with information about municipal housing allocations, ORF reported. State Ombudswoman Doris Winkler-Hofer considers the move unlawful, while the city cites data protection rules.

About 3,000 people are waiting for municipal housing in Innsbruck, where the supply is limited. Cases in which applicants are denied a cheaper municipal apartment because they do not meet certain criteria are also brought to the ombudswoman’s office for support.

The city now requires the office to provide a separate power of attorney before releasing information about housing services. Winkler-Hofer said this had never previously been an issue and was not justified. Her office has identified an administrative failing and informed the Tyrol state parliament.

The ombudswoman said her office had a public-law mandate and served as a bridge between residents and the administration. Requiring a power of attorney would wrongly suggest that she was personally representing an applicant before the City of Innsbruck, she said. She regretted that the office was unable to help Innsbruck residents with housing allocation matters.

The dispute has continued for months. Deputy Mayor Georg Willi of the Greens defended the city’s position, saying officials received highly sensitive information about people’s incomes, illnesses and family circumstances and had to protect their data.

Opposition parties Liste Fritz, the Freedom Party and Das Neue Innsbruck accused the city of disregarding its legal obligation to provide information. They also alleged that formal criteria for housing allocations had recently been applied deliberately strictly so that more applications could be rejected.

Gregor Sanders, a city councillor for the Communist Party, made a similar allegation. He said the number of people reporting rejected applications had risen sharply over the past three months. The criteria appeared to be interpreted very strictly, he said, raising the suspicion that people were being deliberately deterred because too few apartments were available.