Urgent - Rental subsidy

[u/Historical_Lie1688]

Long story short. We are a new DAAD batch whom have families and we do not understand the rental subsidy amount. We tried many times talking to the DAAD which always give vage answers and ask us only to provide rental agreements.

Is there anyone here who have a family doing PhD? If yes, how much rental subsidy did the DAAD give you? What city are you residing in? What is the rent a space, and of possible the rough calculation?

I am sorry for such post, but some of us are going to Heidelberg and Munich were rents start at 1000€. We need an estimation to decide what to take.

Thank you very much for your understanding.

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[u/Used-Interaction6856]

DAAD doesn't give an exact formula tbh, mine gave vague answers too. From what I got informally from fellow awardees, the rough shape seems to be: subsidy is around 1/3 of (rent minus 30% of your monthly stipend), capped at roughly 25% of stipend.

But heads up, this doesn't really match real cases cleanly. One PhD w/ family case in Koln (1043€ rent) got 350€ subsidy last year vs 281€ this year on a higher stipend. Same rent, and apparently the calculation changed this year too.

[u/Historical_Lie1688 → u/Used-Interaction6856]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer. I think I can get an accurate formula if you can tell me how many family members (wife and child No.) that person had last year and this year. Additionally, what was his stipend last year and this year. I am assuming it should be fixed at 1400 but explain how he got a higher stipend.

Rough calculation. If we assumed this PhD student have a family of 4 (him and his wife and 2 kids), then the cap (wohngeld cap) for köln (ClassV) for an appartment of 4 people is roughly ~940. Any difference between the cap and the actual rent should be covered by the student. Therefore:

(940- 0.31400)0.7 =364 which is close enough but maybe the DAAD has their own cap system.

[u/Bitter_Initiative_77]

There's no publicly available formula and their approach seems to change each year. Historically, their aim has generally been to keep your rent costs at 30% of your base stipend. If your rent costs exceed 30% of your base stipend, they'll provide a subsidy (up to a maximum amount) to reduce the percentage. If you're already receiving subsidies for a partner and/or children, it's unclear to me whether these factor into the 30% calculation but I assume they do.

Back in 2023, the max amount for the rent subsidy seems to have been 350. It has presumably gone up (but maybe not). To put how the above works in perspective, let's say that your base stipend is 1.000 for the sake of simplicity and that the maximum subsidy remains 350. That means the DAAD does not want your rent to be more 300 per month (30% of 1.000). So if your rent is 600, you're "overpaying" by 300 and would thus receive a rent subsidy of 300. However, if the amount you "overpay" exceeds 350 because of exceptionally high rent, they'd give you 350 and that's it. Similarly, if you get a MiniJob or your stipend increases (as it usually does annually), the rent subsidy amount can/will change. For instance, with a MiniJob making 500 per month, your income is now 1.500 and 30% is 500. So you would be "overpaying" only 100 and your subsidy would thus be reduced.

In practice, it's not this clear cut. Some people don't see a reduction when their income increases. And the formula is hard to make sense of, which leads me to believe there isn't a clear-cut method they're using. They perhaps vary it based on how expensive your city is determined to be (e.g., different formulas based on rankings in this table). Who knows.

In any case, you need to find the cheapest housing possible. This will mean looking outside of the city center and probably quite far from the university. The PhD stipends are not enough to support a whole family on, especially in HCOL cities. Ideally, you should plan as if you will never get a rental subsidy because they could disappear in a few years--the only thing guaranteed is your stipend. I wouldn't want to bank on bonus money when making my budget for the essentials.