Metropolis Camping: Emergency for the Homeless Under Berlin Bridges
They are young and increasingly homeless. This is according to the 2022 statistical report published on Monday by the Federal Working Group for Homeless Support (BAG-W). Page 32 “Living conditions of homeless people and those at risk of homelessness in Germany”. In short, it is a living situation report focusing on young people in need of housing.
The numbers: About 71% of people seeking help from independent association facilities and services are severely homeless. According to BAG-W reporters, 11% are at immediate risk of becoming homeless and almost 4% are living in unacceptable living conditions. The current results are based on data from more than 38,200 clients in 227 facilities and services provided by independent providers. The housing crisis, which can also be measured by gender, is that about a third of those affected are women and two-thirds are men. And one in four homeless women is under 25 years old.
Worse, according to BAG-W, the proportion of households seeking help with children reached a new high of 11% in the previous reporting year of 2021. This was “evenly distributed between couples with children and single-parent households,” a level that “stabilized” to a high level in 2022. What’s more, “at around 39%, more than one in three households that went to relief facilities did not have a flat of their own to show for when help began.”
Also, about 16% of clients who accept offers of help are under the age of 25. According to BAG-W, “almost 13% of severely homeless people between the ages of 18 and 25 have spent a night on the streets before they seek help.” For those under 18, that figure is even higher at 16%.
Sarah Lotties, statistics and documentation specialist at BAG-W, knows that “homeless youth find accommodation with friends or acquaintances who are good friends to some extent.” What may seem harmless at first is often in fact a temporary, stopgap measure, characterised by a life of uncertainty. Moreover, such living situations often lead to dependency and sometimes dangerous relationships, for example sexual ones. Lotties’ BAG-W colleague Martin Kositza adds that the lack of housing or shelter means that young people in particular have much worse chances for education, participation or career success. “The result is often poverty and social exclusion.”
What do tenant associations say? Rainer Balcerowiak, a spokesman for the Berlin Tenants Association, said Monday that the report “once again shows that current policies largely ignore the increasingly serious problem of homelessness.” jW. Homeless people need housing to lead their own lives again, but not always new and precarious temporary solutions. What is needed is a protected part of the portfolio and, above all, high investments in municipal housing construction. This is the only way to overcome homelessness and the housing shortage, Balcerowiak emphasized further. Rolf Bosse, managing director of the Hamburg Tenants’ Association, put it simply and succinctly in this newspaper on the same day: “It is a scandal that homelessness is a problem among young people.”
Caren Lay (Die Linke) interprets the situation in a similar way. According to the Bundestag group’s housing policy spokesperson on Monday, rent and energy debt are the most common causes of housing loss. jW. Young adults who move out of their parents’ homes often have difficulty finding affordable apartments. The Traffic Light Coalition remains inactive on housing issues, particularly on rising rents. Completely.
And Katrin Schmidberger (Alliance 90/The Greens) is furious. In the federal capital alone, 2 percent of apartments are empty. “That’s 40,000 apartments,” says the spokeswoman for the parliamentary group JW, the Berlin Bundestag faction. The idea that vacancies are a tax break for landlords is cynical. “At the same time, more and more people are having to sleep on the streets,” especially young people.
