The Figures are alarming: hundreds of thousands are in the Federal Republic of homeless, especially in the large cities, tens of thousands sleep homeless under the open sky, even in Winter. And there will always be more. But people in Germany must really live on the street? And what is the role of the housing shortage, immigration and social policy play?
All questions at a Glance: How many homeless there are in Germany?
Why there are no official statistics?
But in Germany nobody has to live on the street, or?
What are the factors that lead to homelessness?
What is the role of immigration?
How can homelessness be effectively combated?
What it is already doing to combat homelessness?
How many homeless there are in Germany?
eleven years Ago, the number of the Apartment lay, in Germany, at about 227,000 – since then, it has risen rapidly. So around 860,000 people had in the year 2016 no contractually safe housing. Most of them live in transitional homes, shelters and women’s shelters or staying temporarily with friends. 52,000 people to sleep but also as homeless without a roof over your head on the road. Alone in this Winter, at least eleven have died from the cold, since the reunification, there are more than 300.
Who is able to hide its Not – a lot of homeless but no longer can. In the streets they are so obvious. And yet you live like all the homeless in the shadows of the statistics. Because all data and surveys are based on estimates of the Federal Association for assistance to the homeless (BAGW), in the local authorities and service providers for the homeless are organised. At the Federal level, official Figures are missing.
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Why there are no official statistics?
For many years, will be a debate about official statistics. Especially representatives of the CDU argue that a census is not feasible or simply too expensive.
supporters, however, point not only to a feasibility study conducted by the Federal Statistical office from the nineties, but also in the UK, where the homeless are to be officially counted. The Land of North Rhine-Westphalia recorded, at least the homeless people housed by local authorities or voluntary organisations. More difficult is the counting should be for people living on the street or at friends find shelter. But even that seems to be with a certain degree of fault tolerance is possible: In Hamburg have been recorded in the last autumn of the homeless, about 2,000 people lived on the streets of the Hanseatic city. Also Berlin is planning such a count.
And so Werena Rosenke, Executive Director of the BAGW suspected, behind the lack of statistics especially for political reasons: “In the past, the Federal government wanted no official Numbers, because these revealed the Problem very clearly, and so the pressure would have increased.” In the meantime, movement but in the matter, says Rosenke: “We have the impression that the political willingness for the introduction of an emergency housing statistics was never so large as now.”
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But life in Germany, but no one on the road, or?
Theoretically, that’s true. The right to Housing is written not only as a human right in the Charter of the United Nations, local authorities are obliged in Germany, order legally, people without a roof over the head. But not all homeless people want. There’s, like, the Punks from the pedestrian area, the likely to remain voluntarily outside. And then those, which the year has a long life on the road, both physically and mentally so that they take hardly any help. Who lives on the street in Germany, so you might think, the is so help.
However, the Situation is much more complex than it appears at first glance. Most of the Apartment are homeless – and therefore hardly visible. Many people live for years in assisted living homes and no longer find their way back in a regular life. Landlords often do not want to the homeless for rent, but without an apartment get a Job and without a Job, a flat of our own. The sprawling bureaucracy, and the often narrow to a shelter, make many to create. Even families are always more likely to be homeless, more than every fourth person is female, appreciates the BAGW.
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What are the factors that lead to homelessness?
With freedom or voluntariness of this has to do so little – as well as the way in which homelessness is rarely a conscious decision. Many Sufferers report of separation, illness, and an unexpected termination, by the sudden job loss, or violence experiences, which have led to housing loss. Often, helplessness and Resignation to join. It blows of fate are, how you all meet people. But who is protected economically and socially, it can handle better. And that’s exactly the whole point seems to be that more and more people will lose this protection. The danger to be in an economically difficult situation of personal disasters to hit and then to the bottom of the slide, is greater, because the social problems are getting worse, as well as Werena Rosenke from the BAGW reported: “The main reasons for the massive increase in homelessness, the increasing poverty and the housing shortage.”
Germany, one of the largest low wage sectors in Europe, the number of poor has increased in the last 30 years, while the rental rates are exploding in many cities formally. More and more people can pay more of their rent, which also gets the middle class to feel for a long time. A drastic example: Frankfurt-am-Main. According to the local Rent index, net rent since the turn of the Millennium, approximately half became more expensive. A two-room apartment costs as quickly 1.000 Euro – cold. At the same time, there is for the needy, less and less social housing, every year tens of thousands out of the bond to fall.
but Who, nevertheless, especially for individual reasons or personal Verschulden into the field, or of a few homeless people all the homeless, and to explain homelessness, thereby disguises the political and social causes.
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What is the role immigration plays?
Many people have come in the last few years to Germany and need an apartment. In 2016 about half of the 860.000 Apartment were Refugees. That homelessness is still not an “imported Problem”, shows the following numbers: between 2008 and 2014, i.e. before the strong immigration of EU-citizens and asylum seekers – has increased the number of homeless by about 50 percent.
another allegation that is heard repeatedly: the Refugees would immediately get a property, but local homeless won’t be helped. The resistance, Matthias Günther, head of the Pestel-research Institute speaks: “in the nineties, it was said that the resettlers would be preferred in the case of the apartment search. That was true at the time, as little as it is today, especially when you look at the part of the bad housing conditions of refugees.” The Economist points out that, in the meantime, millions of poor people compete for affordable housing. “Refugees make up only a small part. This is your turn to play a question of Distribution of immigrants and native poor against each other creates problems and stirs up wrong feelings of resentment.” That in some places, however, the impression that the course would be preferred wandered be do in addition to the right mood, especially due to the fact that the supply of Refugees have generated a lot of public attention, believes Werena Rosenke. “Overall, the poor are cared for.”
In particular, this is true for immigrants from the EU. For years, is fighting fiercely for their supply, especially the CSU warns again and again before mass “immigration into the social systems”. Although most of the Eastern Europeans find a job here, and the Federal Republic of Germany economically benefited from it, exacerbated by the former SPD Federal Minister of social Affairs Andrea Nahles at the end of 2016 the law. Only someone who has worked as an EU citizen a year in Germany or live here for five years, receives since then, yet the full social benefits. Otherwise, there is a maximum of a month “bridging benefits up to the exit”. However, stakeholders are not only denied benefits, but in some places, even emergency assistance. For example in Hamburg or Frankfurt, you will have more difficult access to Notübernachtungen in the Winter, sometimes strongly – in spite of trim and human rights. So the immigrants from the EU, the failure here is in the search for work, land, more and more often on the road. According to BAGW, the proportion was among the homeless in cities is about 50 percent. Especially in cities like Berlin or Hamburg, the is obvious.
Because the local authorities fear a Zuwanderungssog, if you can afford more help, seems to be hardly any improvement in sight. After all, In Cologne, was opened in the past year, an emergency shelter especially for stranded migrants and migrants from Eastern Europe, since 80 to 90 people from the EU countries, which have no claim to social benefits per night. Soon a consultation will be opened. “A knock-on effect we can’t yet determine,” from the Cathedral city of.
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How can homelessness be effectively combated?
The catalogue of demands of the Federal Association for assistance to the homeless is long: an effective Rent control, an increase in the rule sets for Hartz IV, and a General fight against poverty, the abolition of penalties for the cost of the accommodation, what are the people up in the homelessness and bustle. In addition, official statistics is important, because in order to improve the Situation of the persons Concerned, it is necessary to know them precisely. Many of these claims are not new. After all, the SPD calls in your strategy paper the welfare state in 2025 would be just the best of the abolition of penalties for the housing allowance and the Changes to Hartz IV.
“to homelessness in the first place,” says Werena Rosenke. That is to say: Central to prevention must coordinate work at the local level. There is information about the eviction to be automatically run and Concerned advise. Municipalities can take over in case of doubt, rent arrears and negotiations with landlords. “However, such a Prevention, there are not across the Board”, writes Rosenke. Especially on the country you are missing.
special priority is also the creation of more affordable housing. The Federal government should increase its funding to the countries and this also really more social housing build. Currently would have to arise according to the Pestel-Institute, by 2025, per year to 400,000 affordable homes. Among other things, the re-introduction of the Residential non-profit could help, which was abolished in 1989. “Especially with a rain-building activity has been curbed in the nineties, the homelessness successfully”, says Matthias Günther. At that time, the number of the Apartment lay ever at nearly one Million, more than a third of them were so-called repatriates from the former Eastern bloc. “But at the moment the housing sector is left to the market”, writes Günther. It is important, according to BAGW, moreover, that housing will be specifically allocated to the homeless – because they have the greatest difficulties to find a new place to Stay.
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What is already being done to combat homelessness?
in Many places there are shelters, day stays, and special Advisory services. Many cities in cold buses in the Winter. And also individuals to help: by donating money to the homeless or supporting auxiliary equipment. But often the state’s offer and its quality are not enough just now – so some municipalities to go ahead with a particular commitment.
the city of Karlsruhe, the leased since 2005, over 700 apartments, and aimed at the socially Disadvantaged has been awarded, the service and social education. The Karlsruhe model has found, among other things, in Ulm, already imitators. And in Düsseldorf, a private Association, the homeless newspaper, fifty-fifty has bought to 42 residential units and 54 formerly Obdachlose housed without preconditions. Well-known artists such as Gerhard Richter, have donated works in the million value. Housing First, an innovative concept that will be tried out in Berlin and other European cities. The idea behind it: What the homeless first and foremost need is to have a home of their own. You are to solve all other problems. Housing First breaks with the widespread idea that apartment need to prove your “living ability”. The success of the far right, because as soon as someone lands later back on the road. Similarly, the places, the supplies in Munich women with their own apartments to work. And the city of Bremen forgives 20 percent of the assisted homes to the homeless.
homelessness – An Igloo against the cold In France, homeless people in igloos protection. Through the insulation, it is up to 15 degrees warmer than it is outside. To be a Video © photo: Nicolas Tucat/
as far as some of the private initiatives and municipalities, the Federal government seems to be, however. On Thursday will be discussed in the Bundestag once more about homelessness. The government presented to the plenary their latest rent report – he comes from the year 2016. Subsequently, the opposition groups and their applications to combat homelessness, which will be referred to thereafter in the respective committees, to be later expected to be rejected. The Left calls for an emergency housing statistics, the FDP wants to develop a “comprehensive roof offensive,” roof shells and the housing shortage, to combat it. And the Greens want to see how the BAGW a “national action programme” with the aim that by 2030 no homelessness in Germany. One of the applicants of the green poverty expert Wolfgang strict man-Kuhn is: “Extreme poverty and homelessness have long since reached a non-acceptable extent – that is shameful for such a rich country. Not to act can no longer be justified on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction.” In the past, the Federal government had responded to the homelessness again and again, with a shrug of the shoulders: For the Affected States and local communities are ultimately responsible. On a Small request of the Greens on the topic of homelessness in the last October, the government replied that they had due to the “inadequate and unsecured knowledge” and “no evidence of political measures”.
The BAGW predicted, however, prior to one and a half years, a further rise in homelessness, according to the number of the apartment could be loose, have located already in 2018 at around 1.2 million.
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