According to section 3 of the Federal Housing Promotion Act, social housingpromotion is performed at state level and each state government has to define its own approval procedures. By way of section 2 of the North Rhine-Westphalian State Housing Promotion Act, responsibility for the approval of social housing promotion funds has been assigned to the various local governments (for towns with populations over 60,000) and district governments. These communities have so-called approval authorities which are entitled to commit promotion funds on behalf of Wohnungsbauförderungsanstalt NRW (Wfa). Based on these commitments under public law, Wfa then extends private-law loans to the recipients of the promotion funds.