By Gunnar Schupelius
The capital has to accommodate more homeless foreigners than any other federal state. The reserves are exhausted because the immigration policy has not been thought through to the end, says Gunnar Schupelius.
For the first time, the Federal Statistical Office evaluated data on homeless people who had to be quartered in emergency shelters by the cities and municipalities because they could not find an apartment themselves.
As of January 1, there were a total of 178,000 people nationwide. This does not include the homeless who continue to live on the streets. Among the federal states, Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia are at the top with 36,000 inmates each.
In absolute terms, Berlin is in third place with 26,000 people accommodated, but in relation to the number of inhabitants it is in first place. This is where the problem is greatest.
Of the houseless people accommodated, 64 percent had foreign nationality and 31 percent German nationality. No information was available about the remaining five percent.
Conclusion of the survey: Berlin is far from being able to offer all people who come to the city adequate living space.
Social Senator Katja Kipping (left) only officially admitted this on July 5th. Only 75 of a total of 30,000 accommodation options are still available. “The free places available for refugees in communal accommodation are melting like ice in the sun,” she said.
It looks just as bleak with the living space in the long run. Although the Senate is building housing for more than one billion euros only for asylum seekers (“modular accommodation for refugees”) and although the municipal housing associations are obliged to allocate a certain proportion of social housing only to asylum seekers, it is not enough at all. According to the last current census from December 2021, 968,900 households have a housing entitlement certificate for social housing, but there are 88,901 social apartments. More than 90 percent of those entitled go away empty-handed.
In this situation, the Senate would have to pull the emergency brake and limit the influx of foreigners. But the opposite is the case: Berlin wants to take in even more refugees and migrants from the Mediterranean and rejects the deportation of rejected asylum seekers who are obliged to leave the country, and who are even to be given a permanent right to stay.
This policy has not been thought through to the end. People are promised that they will stay, but they cannot accommodate them and the promise cannot be kept. Homelessness among the immigrants is taken care of, quite apart from the fact that the local population can no longer find housing either.
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