The second Berlin-wide survey of homeless people planned for June 22 will not take place. The organizers of the census, the Association for Social-Cultural Work VskA e.V., decided with the approval of the Senate Department for Integration, Labor and Social Affairs.
So far, only 1,200 volunteers have registered for the planned survey – it would have taken at least 2,400 volunteers “to do justice to the purpose of a survey and to be able to ensure comparability with the results of the first survey in January 2020,” said the VskA With. At the same time, it was decided to postpone the planned survey to January 2023. Volunteers had been showing less interest for weeks.
One reason given by the VskA is that volunteers are currently primarily concerned with providing help and support for the Ukraine refugees. “This special challenge is currently demanding the potential of committed people in an unforeseeable way,” says the VskA.
[If you want to have all the latest news live on your mobile phone, we recommend our app, which you can download here for Apple and Android devices.] The volunteers’ reluctance may also be due to the unsatisfactory result of the previous count in January 2020. Volunteers sometimes walked for hours through the night without encountering a homeless person.
Many homeless people apparently deliberately avoided being counted.
The approximately 2,000 homeless people who were counted had nothing to do with the reality of Berlin and did not allow any conclusions for targeted aid programs. Volunteers also had the impression that the whole event had been badly and aimlessly prepared. So far, however, there has been no self-criticism by the Senate administration or arguments as to why the count should be better this time.
