Observers skeptical

Gswb only wants to have a handful of open tickets

Inquiries and complaints from thousands of Gswb tenants went unanswered at the end of 2023 - now the company says there are only a few outstanding "tickets". This makes observers suspicious.(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

Instead of thousands of open cases, so-called tickets, Gswb only wants to have a handful. This raises questions among observers. 

Each of the most recent supervisory board meetings of Salzburg's largest non-profit housing association Gswb has raised more questions than it has answered. This also applies after the latest meeting on Tuesday, which culminated in the resignation of Lukas Wolff. But it is not the departure of the head of the supervisory board that has observers wondering. Rather, it is the number of tickets that the chaos construction company wants to have processed. Until December, over 4,000 customer inquiries, i.e. complaints, requests for help and similar from tenants and homeowners, had the status "unprocessed".

It will be months before there is clarity at Gswb about tickets, grievances and the new management team(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

On Tuesday, the Supervisory Board was informed by the company that there would only be a handful left after the dismissal of Managing Director Peter Rassaerts within a few weeks. A Gswb insider poses a question that many are probably thinking: "So can Gswb do it after all? Then it would have to admit that it has completely overslept the past few years. Or, on closer inspection, these figures don't stand up to scrutiny!"

In any case, it is likely to be months before the abuses within Gswb, which has 25,000 apartments in the province, are cleared up. The review of the administration, internal and external communication and the audit of the auditing association has not even really begun.