Today’s candidate for the #kindnessandingenuity award is a piece of social housing set up in 1516 by Jakob Fugger who combined massive business acuity with a very strong religious and social conscience.
Seeing that Augsburg had rather too many poor and homeless people, he set up a community of around 50 homes to be available to any “poor, religious people living in Augsburg” (not necessarily lifetime Augsburgers) – and, crucially, endowed the community with a useful collection of forests and estates to pay for itself.
Over 500 years later the Fuggerei is still here, and descendants of the original family are still very much involved in the management.
The only thing that they overlooked, we believe intentionally, was to inflation-proof the rent, which remains at its original level of one Rhenish Guilder or €0.88 per year.
More information, and more professional pictures of this very charming place, are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei and I will finish by shamelessly pasting a chunk of text from this article in the Smithsonian magazine:
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It’s been a complicated task to keep the Fuggerei going throughout its nearly 500-year history. Funding for the complex has transferred a couple times; in the beginning it was funded by an endowment’s interest yields, and since the 18th century, investments in forestry provide the money for maintenance and operation. The Fugger family, now on the 19th generation since Jakob, is still responsible for maintaining the foundation and trust that Jakob established in 1520 when he opened the Fuggerei. Admission conditions and rules have continually been adapted to the unique circumstances of time—now, for example, residents have to hold a part-time job in the complex, and they don’t have to pay a fee for coming in after 10 p.m. Plus, there’s an administrative team that needs to attend to current business and residential needs, including social education counseling. According to Gabler, flexibility, commitment and a continuing strict set of rules for residents continue to keep the complex a success.
“The Fuggerei is unique in the world,” Gabler says. “A visit enables a view on a special community and its values. This is an important part of the history in Augsburg and the Fugger family, and the Fuggerei shows their development. Even more, our visitors can experience peace and spirituality.”