Sustainable
living

Inside the apartment, on the roof, on the doorstep: Vonovia is committed to integrated sustainability.

When we address the topic of sustainability at Vonovia, we are looking at much more than just ecological aspects. Rather, we focus our attention on the long-term well-being of the people living in our apartments.

In order to ensure that they can stay in our apartments for as long as possible, we are renovating more than every third newly let apartment in Germany to make it senior-friendly. When refurbishing vacant apartments and redesigning spaces, we also make sure that they are as close to barrier-free as possible in terms of accessibility. We now work with numerous nursing care and charitable organizations as part of this approach. After all, if someone wants to grow old in their apartment, they need the right support. We have been cooperating with the “Johanniter” (Order of St. John charitable organization) and the welfare organization Arbeiterwohlfahrt for years now. In many locations, they actually have their contact points directly in our buildings.

Along with this, we want to offer our customers apartments that they can afford in the long term. In order to achieve this, we are gradually bringing our buildings up to the latest energy efficiency standards. While this work helps to protect the environment, it can end up costing tenants more. We have learned that we need to achieve acceptance among our customers and society at large in order to balance out these aspects. This is why we pursue our modernization measures with a sense of balance.

In order to ensure that our customers feel at home in their neighborhoods and want to stay there long term, we also make an appropriate residential environment available for old and young, single people and families alike. This is an area in which we can benefit from our size. As the owner of contiguous settlements, we can actively shape the opportunities for interaction within our neighborhoods – by incorporating playgrounds and green spaces into the overall concept, by implementing joint projects that are beneficial to everyone together with the municipal authorities, and by collaborating with private-sector partners. We are currently implementing 13 neighborhood development projects.

We make it a top priority to protect the natural habitat. We are currently collaborating with Fraunhofer and the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia to develop a neighborhood of the future in Bochum-Weitmar. The area will be home to an innovative example of environmentally and economically efficient energy supplies in urban neighborhoods. A range of technologies are being combined in smart and novel ways in order to reduce energy consumption and forge ahead with sector coupling. The project will provide us with key impetus for the future.

We are also working with the environmental organization Naturschutzbund Deutschland e. V. (NABU) to develop a new design approach for outdoor areas, insect hotels and nest sites.

1,000

Roofs – the 1,000 roofs program launched in 2019 will supply a large number of apartments with solar power in the future.

& means

also thinking about tomorrow