By Gunnar Schupelius
The incumbent Senate has no concept for accommodating migrants and refugees, and neither does the future Senate. Because of this refusal, the situation is getting worse from day to day, says Gunnar Schupelius.
The incumbent Senate has no concept for accommodating asylum seekers, and neither does the future one. In any case, the CDU and SPD did not present a plan in their coalition agreement.
And this despite the fact that the situation is more tense than ever. In March, the number of asylum seekers in Germany increased by 78.1 percent compared to the previous month. This number does not include Ukrainians, meaning migrants from the Middle East.
They mainly aim for Germany. 67 percent of all Syrians, 60 percent of all Turks and 52 percent of all Afghans who come to the EU travel on to Germany. Your asylum application will be processed here, although this is not provided for under German asylum laws if the applicants come from another EU country. The federal government is ignoring it.
Up to 100 people reach Berlin every day who apply for asylum here and have to be accommodated. All collective accommodations are occupied or overcrowded, even at the former airports Tempelhof and Tegel – and they remain so. Because the system of accommodation has collapsed.
This system was based on the possibility that asylum seekers could leave the collective accommodation after a certain period of time and move into an apartment. However, the probability that they will find an apartment is increasingly close to zero.
The Senate built the “Modular Accommodation for Refugees” (MUF) in an urgent procedure and for a total of more than one billion euros. As far as they are finished, these prefabricated buildings are also occupied. No new locations are planned, and politicians are apparently giving way to the anger of local residents who are resisting the accommodations.
Instead, since 2018, asylum seekers have been given a housing entitlement certificate (WBS) to give them the opportunity to obtain social housing. However, this milkmaid calculation did not work out, because a WBS has long since ceased to be a guarantee of getting an apartment.
The latest current figures on this are from December 2021. At that time, 968,900 households owned a WBS, but only 88,901 social housing units were available for them. More than 90 percent of those entitled went away empty-handed. Since then, the situation has not improved, but deteriorated.
In other words, immigration is stranded in the housing market. The backlog has reached all levels. This is carelessly ignored by Berlin’s politicians. You risk an emerging homelessness that will no longer be manageable.
In other parts of Germany one has long found clearer words. The German Association of Towns and Municipalities is demanding the end of uncontrolled immigration and the sealing off of the EU’s external borders. Many districts and cities are joining this demand – regardless of which party governs there.
But the Berlin Senate is silent, as is the CDU, by the way. Because of this refusal, the situation worsens day by day.
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