It works: In contrast to the December aid and the gas and electricity price brake, the Housing Allowance Plus Act now passed by the Bundestag shows that targeted relief is certainly possible in Germany.
The housing benefit supports people whose income or pension is so low that things are regularly tight at the end of the month.
Households that cannot offset rising energy costs by saving elsewhere, like those in the middle class.
In recent years, housing benefit has led a shadowy existence in the state support mix.
On the one hand, this applies to public perception.
Many beneficiaries are unaware that they could get a government subsidy towards their housing costs, let alone how much.
But politically, too, the housing benefit was not very high for a long time.
The often-discussed automatic adjustment to rent and income trends only came into effect at the beginning of this year.
Now the housing benefit is rightly strengthened.
Two million households are to receive it in the future, more than three times as many as is currently the case.
The increased heating costs, previously cushioned by one-off grants, will in future be taken into account month by month.
The question remains whether the housing benefit authorities can also implement the extensions in practice.
As in so many areas, more digitization would also help here.
The law on the division of the CO2 price between tenants and landlords has yet to pass the practical test.
The basic idea is correct: in well-refurbished houses, tenants bear the additional costs (which are not high anyway) due to the CO2 price on their gas or oil consumption alone, in poorly insulated houses the owners have to pay most of the levy - and thus perhaps renovate something more quickly.
However, the timing of the division is extremely unfavorable.
For property managers, the relief for gas and district heating customers means an enormous amount of additional work.
Now they also have to implement a ten-stage CO2 price distribution model.
Frustration is programmed, for tenants and landlords alike.